


106

by zanni_1 (zanni_scaramouche)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Badass Louis Tomlinson, Basically what you would find on an episode of Criminal Minds, Blood, Child Abduction, Crime Scenes, Death, Detective Johanna, Detective Liam Payne, Exes Harry/Zayn, Exes to Lovers, Gen, Kidnapping, Lawyer Harry Styles, Mentions of Prostitution, Mild Gore, Missing Person AU, Multi, Mystery, Niall Centric, POV Alternating, Violence, dark themes, enemies to lovers ish, in a weird way considering he's mia..., not romance heavy, of a sort, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 33,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26727790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanni_scaramouche/pseuds/zanni_1
Summary: Five year old Niall Horan entered the forest holding hands with his older brother Harry, joined by childhood friends Louis and Zayn. He never came out. Twenty years later Detective Johanna Deakin finds Horan’s blood at a gruesome crime scene. As the case unfolds, the four people present at the time of his disappearance find themselves caught in a web of secrets new and old. One question they’re all asking:Where is Niall Horan?
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Perrie Edwards/Zayn Malik
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is messy, rushed, and OOC. A transfer from a Sterek fic (so weird since I usually go the other way, with a Larry fic first)
> 
> Based on a TV show, 'The Five' (it's amazing and way better than this fic and you NEED to go watch it first if you are at all interested in ever doing so because this fic will 100% spoil the ending for you) 
> 
> I wrote this fic before I knew how to write (like, years ago) I just wanted to post _something_ since it feels like forever since I posted! Writing for a lot of festivals rn and it's a fun time but takes awhile to get the fics out into the world and I'm a baby for instant gratification haha. This fic is a bit different with so many main narratives, hope it's not too horribly confusing! 
> 
> Side Note: Anne Twist is in no way related to Harry Styles in this fic. I was just running out of irl people and didn't want to think of oc names.

Stepping under yellow tape is different for everyone. Some feel the beginning of a new mystery and the thrill of a chase compelling them to find scattered puzzle pieces. Others find the dip of their head mimicking shame, like an imposter entering the sacred ground of a religion they don’t belong to. Jay Deakin feels neither of these when she ducks under the stretched border. She’s worn this action out.

Liam Payne follows two strides behind her in the puddle ridden car park, young enough for his eyes to hold the bright glint of possibility. Jay doesn’t make a habit of looking at him for that reason. Forensic techs beat them. They’re clustered at the bottom of the hotel stairwell like a group of interns, overskilled and underpaid, waiting for their turn.

Payne nods towards the stairs and the third floor crime scene.

“What’s up there?”

“Not my sort of holiday,” answers one of the kids. The puppy dog one.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

Jay keeps walking past the lobby so she doesn’t play witness to the flirty smiles and sparkling eye contact. It’s harmless, and she’s had the talk with Louis about spectrums and binarys so she’s got no issues with any of it, honestly, but after three years of her partners back and forth with the boy, she’s lost hope and fears forever being a voyeur to a lost cause.

The hotel is an optimistic three stars. Normally Jay’s conscious of how much dirt her sturdy boots track, but the garish pattern that should have stayed in the seventies does little to arouse remorse as she stomps up the stairs.

The body is a half dressed male. Tear-off strips of condom wrappers litter the floor and a luggage bag spills its guts across the bed. There’s no wallet.

“Name listed at check-in is Billy Martin. Paid cash and was alone at the desk,” Payne reads off the notes.

“You see what I see?” She asks wearily, knowing the end to this before it starts.

Payne’s eyes have lost their shine. Prostitution gone wrong, maybe a lovers tryst if things spice up. And by spice she means ground black pepper, not even cayenne.

“Phones gone,” Payne offers as a consolation prize for the lacklustre scene.

It’s a good point. Wallets aren’t traceable if cards aren’t used, but technology is. Within less than an hour they’ve seen all they can and wave in the forensics kids, they’re all kids to her now, Christ. She’s forced to stop behind Payne when her partner hovers in the doorway and glances at the body.

“You think Louis ever met him?”

Jay forces herself to look at the boy on the floor. Out of habit she avoids the vacant blue eyes. The victim is not a kid, far from it in fact, but he’s near enough to the age of her own son that it plays on her mind. No good comes from blue eyes.

The shrug she gives is a perfected show of nonchalance. “More likely than not.”

Payne is halfway down the stairs when Jay tears herself away and follows with a shake of her head. Her boy.

There’s half a doughnut in her mouth when some across the bullpen yells, “Detective!”

With effort she manages to keep the guilt off of her face. She’s an adult and she’ll eat what she likes. The face of the shouter tells her this isn’t about her cholesterol. It’s one of those forensic kids and he’s sweating.

“Detective, there’s been a match to the blood on the bandage,” the tech gasps.

“What bandage?” She surreptitiously licks a sprinkle from her lips and hopes it’s the only one gone astray.

“We picked up a plaster in the Billy Martin room. The blood, you’re not going to believe this,” the poor tech is shaking and Jay has half a mind to ask what the hell his doctors prescribed because it’s not working.

“Spit it out,” she waves with her sticky fingers to encourage forward movement.

“It’s Niall Horan.” 

A ringing starts so loud her vision starts to blur.

“Who’s idea was this?” 

The tech starts to wobble like he’s uncertain and innocent and not a traitorous little shit. Jay throws the last mouthful of doughnut onto the ground. 

“Whoever thought this was funny is on immediate unpaid suspension. You’ll join them if you don’t tell me who the fucker is.”

Jay doesn’t swear. It took her several years too many to stop the habit after Louis was born and by the time she managed Louis already knew them all, but it took so much effort to erase the words that they remain absent from her vocabulary.

But this. This is something else.

Because she can still feel chubby five year old hands clinging to hers when she curls her hand around her toothbrush. She still sees shining blue eyes behind her lids when she puts her head on the pillow. She still hears Louis screaming Niall’s name for every second it takes to fall asleep in an empty house. Because Niall was in her care when he disappeared twenty years ago, and not a day goes by that Jay doesn’t think about that. It’s been years. Decades. 

There’s only so long you can look.

Payne walks in behind the stuttering tech. His lips are thin but there’s a spark in his eyes. A blasted little flame only a true case could inspire.

“Fuck.”

The curse is a whimper of pain as her chest is torn apart by the ragged claws of a merciless creature cracking the brittle twigs of a once abandoned nest between her ribs. It’s name is hope. With a sweaty hand she touches her brow and hides her hot eyes. Breathe in. Hold it until the shaking bursts it out. Breathe in again. Her free hand fumbles for her desk but she’s falling into her chair before she can grab it. She sinks down.

An hour of breathing air through the screened window above her ten cubic feet of personal property in the bullpen finds her once more in control of her body, if somewhat stiffly. She picks up the phone.

X

Each footstep Harry takes bounces around him in the cement box of a room. It neatly holds one table, a pair of chairs, and the two people he hates most in the world. Katheryn Hudson smirks from her seat.

“Can’t stay away, can you?” Her high voice echoes in the chilled space, but she’s wrong.

He has stayed away. In nearly a decade he’s managed to forget how it felt to breathe the recycled oxygen pushed through these halls. When the worst he had to bear was knowing. Listening to her describe every cut she made, every scream or cry or beg, how many hours it took until his brother died.

It wasn’t the first time he’d lost a family. 

There was no one to tell him about the fire. It had been an accident. He’s seen the report, it says the exact same thing they told him at ten years old. A gas leak in the night, someone sparking the stove to make midnight tea. No one's fault. Harry had been staying at a friends house to work on a school project while an uncle visited for a week. His mum was the only one who drank tea. His sister and uncle had been trapped by a fallen support beam on the top floor. A tragic accident and nothing more.

A friend of the family, Maura Horan, was quick to take him in when no other relatives could. She told Harry she always wanted another son, someone for Niall to play with and learn from and trust. She was nothing but a patient and caring mother to him, and Harry failed her. 

Failed his brother.

“It’s not your fault Harry,” Maura had said with his face between both hands so he had nowhere to escape. It’d been the muddled hours of morning after an eighteen hour shift and her eyes looked exhausted when they bore into his. “It’s no one's fault but the bitch who took him.”

So when he was sixteen and the sorrow had hardened into hate, he’d visited the woman they said was responsible. They never found Niall, but there were others. Kids like him, little and gullible. Their bodies put her behind bars and Harry finally had a face other than the mirror to blame. 

He’s outgrown the desire to speak with her after the years it took to realise whatever it was he was looking for, it wouldn’t be given from her. But that was before this morning. 

Now he waits until he’s fully seated in his chair with both feet flat on the floor to ask, “Did you kill him?”

Her head knocks back with the force of her laughter, so shrill and sharp it could never be confused for joy.

“Why ask what you already know?” She giggles.

He grinds his jaw and commits to their old game. “How did you do it?”

The smile on her is razor sharp. “I tracked him the moment you let him go, caught him wandering like a lost pup. I got my hands on him before he could say your name, and you know what happened next?”

“He’s alive.”

He cuts her off with a certainty he doesn’t have. He doesn’t know what to think after the phone call he received from Mrs. Deakin this morning, but he wants to see Katheryn’s face when she says it. He watches closely.

“They found his blood this morning.”

Katheryn’s smile dims, but she gets a handle on it and stretches her lips wide in a grisly show of teeth.

“I took him,” she snarls. “Then I put a knife in my hand and I stuck your little baby brother like a squealing pig.”

Though her eyes are wide, they’re not crazed. However twisted her view of it is, she still lives in the same reality he does.

He exits the room. Kathryn's chains may nail her to the floor, but he can feel the grabbing hands of thoughts he’d left in these halls snag on his clothes and dig into his skin. There’s a voice in his head he hears with every step.

What if.

He tries to ignore how much it sounds like Louis.

X

“We don’t choke our friends,“ Louis says coughing on the air. “Jenny, your new perfume is great but unless you’re trying to kill me, one spray is okay. Not twelve.”

The girl sheepishly slips out of the common room. Louis knows it’s probably her first perfume and she’s excited, but everyone still needs to breathe so he knocks open a few of the windows behind the sofas.

He’s bent over the back of thin upholstery and fighting with layers of crusted paint jamming the window sill when he hears someone crash in. One glance to the entrance arch of the common room and Louis has never seen him before, but he’s seen the look. The kid is tall and out of breath. There’s a flighty look in his eye that Louis’ seen before. What makes Louis scramble off of the sofa is the widespread fear that tops it off.

“Hey, it’s cool mate. You’re safe here.”

The look on the guys face is enough to say there’s not an ounce of trust between them, Louis wasn’t expecting there to be, but the desperate looks the kid keeps casting down the hall are putting him on edge. Or, more of an edge. Louis angles himself to see down the hall.

“Is someone following you?”

The guy looks over his shoulder one more time like a bad twitch and then shakes his head.

“I don’t think so. I need… ” he looks over his shoulder again, “I need you to call the cops.”

It’s not the first time Louis has had the cops as guests of the Centre. He’s not a fan. It always puts everyone on edge for a few days and he has to remind them he can be trusted. Being the son of a cop never made him a snitch. He barely makes eye contact with his mother when she shows up with Mr. Muscle in tow like always.

Nick crosses his arms where he leans in the archway with Louis, hovering between the entrance hall and common room. Louis has been turning people away with the rumour of a flood, but he lets Nick stay and watch the new boy talk with detectives. 

It’s a hell of a story. Kidnapped, held captive, and a harrowing escape to boot. It’s almost harder to believe than the phone call from his mum earlier, but Louis has been blocking all memory of that conversation so he can keep functioning. The boy's arrival has been an excellent distraction.

“Why did he come here?” Nick asks. “Out of all the places to go, why would he show up here?”

Louis gives him a side eye. His friend keeps shifting his weight, a scowl on his face. It’s quite unlike his usual fondness for promising new strays. 

“Maybe he’s been here before, maybe it was the first place he saw.” Louis shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. He said there were others with him. I hope they find the bastard quick.”

Nick hums in not-quite-agreement. There’s something off about him still. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the new kid, Greg, even when Louis thinks Nick must feel Louis looking at him. Not everyone grew up with case files as bedroom stories, he reminds himself. Maybe he should give Nick the next few days off. It’s been too long since either of them took a decent amount of time away from work. Running a youth shelter was a job that demanded a break, or else it broke you.

The idea to build this place had been in Louis’ head long before graduation, but he didn’t commit until Harry moved in with Zayn. His memory of those first few days after hearing about it, what he wasn’t blacked out for, are not his finest. Harry had been holding Zayn’s hand since grade school, they were the ‘it’ couple. Yet during Louis’ senior high school year there had been some… interesting developments. Like Harry showing up unannounced. Like Harry pushing him against a wall. Like making out and jerking each other off. On numerous occasions.

And Louis hadn’t asked about it, didn’t want to question a good thing, but he’d thought… he doesn’t know what he thought. The day Zayn posted a photo of the happy couple smiling in front of a shared set of keys pushed him into a downward-denial-spiral-of-doom, or so his mum has dubbed it. When he surfaced three weeks and many litres of alcohol later he dedicated himself to staying sober and latched onto the foreclosed building near the wrong side of town.

For seven years he’s put his heart into running this place. Creating a safe haven for kids with no options took more than a building and a few beds. Louis’ office upstairs doubles as his bedroom, he spent his college fund on furnishing the building and legalizing the place, applying for government funding and grants wherever he could. Whatever he can spare he pays the staff, most of which are people he took in near the beginning, like Nick.

He’s kept his distance from Zayn and Harry. After their breakup there wasn’t really a reason to reconnect. Harry was off getting his law degree, Zayn was promoting his art, and Louis was here, earning next to nothing and eating leftovers from his mother’s fridge. They exchange Christmas cards and the occasional birthday text, but it’s been a long time since he’s actually spoken to either of them.

His mum called them all this morning. Louis thinks he was third on the list, right after direct family. Now, as he lets his muscles relax and the doorway frame dig into his back, his mind wonders how they reacted. He wonders if their guts are twisting as tightly as his every time they move with the thought of Niall being alive. 

The inside of his cheeks are ragged from where he’s bitten them to shreds to keep from shouting the four words scrabbling to get out.

I told you so.

X

The woman has the audacity to ask, “Are you serious?”

Some genius in the forensics lab made the connection between the plaster they found Niall’s blood on and the blood donor fair that ran the weekend before. It was the same little circle they used, and with only a little dot of blood on it’s gauze it fit the bill for a needle wound. There were cameras around the facility. They possibly held the image of Niall Horan walking and breathing and living.

She doesn’t stop there. “They ran for thirty six hours. Each. That’s like a hundred and fifty hours of footage. It’s going to take weeks.”

Jay puts her hands on her waist and leans close. “We’ve waited twenty years. I can wait a few weeks.”

“Jay.” 

The paper filer scurries off at the sound of her partner's voice before Jay can dig into her further.

Payne jogs down the aisle between desks. He’s fit and young and doesn’t sound out of breath when he reaches her. Jay wishes she wasn’t jealous.

“We located Billy Martin’s phone, they’re bringing in the guy who had it.”

“Is he… ”

Payne's lips thin before he nods.

“Brown hair, blue eyes, mid twenties. We don’t know. It could be but,” Payne winces like he can feel the death grip Jay’s eyes have on his every movement, trying to hear something his words aren’t saying. “There’s no way to know. He’s not speaking yet.”

It’s the last word, those three little letters of inevitability, that drive it home. Blood pulses in her temples, her neck, her sweaty palms. There’s a boy in custody. A man, really. She tells herself it’s not Niall Horan, but it could be, and the possibility of it clogs her veins.

She’s not going to be able to tell. 

The fact is shameful to admit. Twenty years is too long for her to predict what chubby, rosy cheeked Niall would look like as an adult. The memory of his features have been warped by grief and time. She can’t call Maura. Maybe she could, but she doesn’t feel she should. Maybe Jay’s too close to this, but she can’t bear to drag her old friend back into a nightmare she’s had to drag herself out of.

She calls Harry. It’s not much better.

X

A double hit of deja vu puts Harry twenty three, then twenty, years back when he enters the police station. It fades when he sees Louis drumming his fingers on the front work top and staring in the vacant way he does when deep in thought. Harry used to see him like this, when he came through the window and Louis was elbow deep in homework.

Louis wears his hair differently. Longer. He’s lost the roundness of childhood, now angular where he used to be soft. Harry’s been still in a busy room for too long, he attracts the attention of curious blue eyes. They’re the same as they’ve always been and seeing them in the face of this new Louis pulls Harry into the present moment. He can move again.

“It’s not him,” Louis says when Harry reaches the desk.

There are photos splayed out but Harry doesn’t look. He’s got a feeling the direct weight of his gaze is the only thing keeping Louis from punching him or disappearing and Harry hasn’t decided which he would prefer to happen.

“How can you know?”

Louis' voice goes snide when he replies, “I think I would know.”

The heat of aggression flares in Harry’s lungs at Louis’ tone. Harry clenches his fists with the effort not to snap back and finally looks at the glossy fresh photographs displayed on the counter. They’re of a man the correct age and hair colour, yet within the first second Harry’s gut clenches. Louis is right. Whoever this young man is, he’s not Niall.

His suspicions were correct about Louis. When Harry stops looking at the photos he’s alone at the desk. A quick glance into the station and he spots Louis twenty yards away. Harry can’t stop his automatic scan of this new Louis again, getting caught on the harsh slant of his cheekbones, the defined line of his jaw, the curve of his eyebrows.

Harry’s mind is searching for something, but before he can recognize what it is the full picture comes into focus and he realizes what Louis is doing. He’s leaning over a desk with his phone out. Harry looks at the cops scattered around. They’re chatting in groups with food in hand, mostly on lunch break or heads down stuck in notes and laptops. No one notices Louis snapping photos. No one but Harry.

He marches over. There’s more photos on the desk, this time of a young man much less alive than the last. Louis gives him a glance and continues skimming his fingers over to show the photo’s buried underneath and taps his phone a few more times. Harry doesn’t remember him ever being this silent. He can only stand it so long.

“What are you doing?”

He keeps his voice low to avoid drawing attention, his eyes still shifting around the room. The desks are only separated by stacks of paper and books, not nearly enough for Louis’ actions to be discreet.

“Cops have their limitations. Sometimes they need a little assist.”

Harry grinds his jaw at the implications. Louis catches it and rolls his eyes.

“Calm down.” Louis slips his phone into a pocket and stands straighter to face Harry proper. “I show this photo to a few people, maybe they knew him, maybe they didn’t. If they did, we’re one step closer to finding Niall. You’re welcome.”

Louis pokes him in the chest.

Harry looks at the photos again. It’s not a pretty death. He catches the name scribbled on the bottom; Billy Martin. The body they found Niall’s blood next to. An unsettling tilt takes over the world when Harry tries to picture a baby faced five year old Niall in the same room as the body. He clenches his jaw to hold off the bile burning his throat. 

Then he thinks of Louis asking the wrong person the wrong question and pushing when he should back off, because that’s all he ever does, and Harry almost chokes as the photo distorts to show Louis face down.

“I’m coming with.”

Louis opens his mouth like he’s going to fight him on it. Then he does something. He closes his mouth and thinks before he talks. Harry feels his eyes widen in shock.

“Fine. But my house, my rules.” Louis says without noticing or perhaps ignoring the way Harry is gocking at him.

As Louis grabs a pen and notebook from the desk Harry shamelessly catalogues his face, counts the lashes fanned on his cheek and calculates the curl of his fringe so he can be certain that this is the same boy he knew growing up. Seconds later Louis shoves an inelegantly folded note into Harry’s hands.

“Meet me there. Don’t expect me to wait.”

He heads for the door and Harry turns to follow.

“Harry,” someone calls.

Harry finds Mrs. Deakin coming towards him. There’s a spot in Harry’s chest that will always be soft for the woman. She was the responding officer for the fire. She used to be a staple figure in the Horan house, until the disappearance. He knows there’s tension between his Maura and her now, too much grief and guilt, but he’s never blamed her. Couldn’t when he knew it was himself to blame. 

“Detective,” he greets.

They go over what they can about the case. A body, a plaster, a few drops of blood. Mrs. Deakin can’t say much more, but she admits there’s nothing to add even if she wanted to. They shake hands and the detective pulls him into a quick one armed hug.

“I’m not going to stop this time,” Mrs. Deakin says when they part. There’s steel in her eyes.

Harry nods. “I believe you.”

It was Zayn who told Harry about the home for wayward youth Louis was running. At the time, between applying for scholarships and imitating something close to domestic bliss, Harry had been avoiding any thought of Louis. 

He looks at the numbers scribbled in familiar penmanship. It represents the life Louis has now. Harry would have no idea where it was if Louis hadn’t written the address for him. He tries to ignore how unsettled the thought makes him when he punches it into his GPS.

Louis is talking to a thin brunette when Harry enters the Centre for the first time. The place is quaint. Cozy, in a worn-in a sort of way. There’s a wall of printed photos filled with smiling faces Harry avoids looking at too closely. A scattered bunch of sofas fill one side of the room, a few tables in the back where kids are eating and writing in notebooks, open space in the middle with scars on the floor to show for it’s history of use.

“Nothing,” Louis says, appearing at his side while the place has distracted him. 

Harry hums. His throat feels tight. It’s hard to adjust to a Louis that can move so quietly. 

“C’mon,” Louis says when Harry hovers awkwardly like a moron with his fists in his pockets. “I’ve got a feeling Camille knows something.”

Harry lags behind Louis as they approach a girl with limp dirty blond hair sitting at a table. Louis sits opposite of the teen with her nose in a book. Harry copies him and drops into an obscenely bright plastic chair, feeling like he’s in kindergarten.

“What?” The girl asks curtly with an accented voice over the pages.

Louis puts on a tight smile. Harry wonders if he’s this bad with all the kids. 

“Camille, this is Harry,”

“Is he a cop?” Camille flicks a glare at them.

“No,” Louis huffs. “He’s my… my old friend.”

Harry watches Louis stumble and wince over the words. Harry works to keep his face blank. Friends. Yeah, they were friends once. 

“We’re looking for his brother. Can I show you a photo of a body?”

The girl looks between them like they’re a pair of idiots. It makes Harry’s palms itch to strangle the little shit.

“I don’t know how you think a body is going to help you find your brother.” She taps on the pages of her half closed book before sighing, “Fine.” 

“Great!” Louis perks up and slides his phone over the table.

Camille picks it up. She flicks through the photos quickly until her face pales. She swipes slowly one more time and drops the phone. She shoves it back at Louis with a weak scowl on her face. Harry knows the girl is trying not to show how affected she is, he wears the same look when he visits Katheryn. Hopefully he wears it better.

“Yeah, I know- knew him,” She says, no longer meeting their eyes. “That’s Ben.”

“Ben?” Harry copies.

Camille cuts him a quick glare.

“That’s what I said, _blaireau_. Ben Murs. Seymour street paid for his studies, but he left months ago. Became some big intern man with Modest Tech.”

“Thanks Camille. Big help.” Louis gets up and stalls by his chair. “See you later for game night?”

Harry can’t believe it. Louis is going to walk away? This girl might know what happened, she could be holding onto something that could get them to Niall. Louis gives him a look and jerks his head in a pointed message. Harry returns the raised eyebrows and uses both palms on the table to shove himself out of the chair. When he looks at Camille again her shoulders have dropped from their tense raise and she’s rolling his eyes.

“Dream on, Tommo.”

“I plan to!” Louis calls back and leads Harry away with a shoving hand on his bicep.

“What the hell, Louis,” Harry demands under his breath.

Louis doesn’t seem phased, still walking towards the hallway when he answers, “We have a name and company. Anything she can tell us we can find elsewhere.”

That’s not enough. Over the years Harry’s carried a pebble of anger in his ribcage, a hot stone he pushes all of his rage into when he needs to keep his head battling in court. It took years to foster, and within seconds every effort he’s put into his control flies out the window as the pebble grows into a boulder crushing on his lungs.

As soon as they turn into the hall Harry crowds into Louis’ space.

“She could know something! We didn’t even show her a photo of Niall, what if she knows-”

Louis doesn’t shy away from him like expected. They end face to face with inches between them.

“I push more now and she clams up, then the cops have to come in and question her, then she disappears and next I’m showing her photo around, hm?”

He looks Harry square in the eye and it’s clear Louis inherited the steel will of his mother. Harry grinds his jaw and backs off. He shakes his head and keeps going until he’s out the door.

x

“Sheriff.”

“Deputy,” Jay nods to Payne as he approaches her desk, an old joke from Payne’s training days.

Jay presses into the chair and stretches out her back with a groan. She rubs her hands across her face, digging the heels of her palms into her burning eyes. When she blinks the spots away she sees Payne propped against his own desk in a slump. There’s a bad taste in Jay’s mouth. 

Their only lead on the Billy Martin case was the cellphone guy. A convincing tail of ill-timed pick-pocketing and a negative facial match to Niall meant they had to let him walk out the door and leave them with shit all.

“Anything on our phone thief?”

“Arnold Twist,” Jay reads from the screen, “one parking ticket two years ago. Needs a new photo, but no priors, no misdemeanors, and no reason to keep him around.”

Jay spins in her chair, her mind snagged on Niall’s sudden reappearance. How did that sweet little boy get wrapped up into something like this? What’s happened to him?

Payne looks at his watch. “You thinking pepperoni or spicy chicken tonight?”

Jay shifts gears and starts considering the pros and cons of meat toppings versus heartburn when her weight rotates the unbalanced chair to face the door. Her features furrow before she knows why she’s confused. A familiar face is at the entrance talking with the secretary. Greg James. The kid Louis called in. 

Captured five years ago on his way home from an afterschool job, kept in the dark, used to play out his tormentors fantasies. There’d been a tearful reunion when his parents and little sister came to pick him up, Jay had needed to look away to maintain her composure.

The kid catches her eye from across the room.

“Look alive, Payne.” She stands and rebuttons the top of her collar. “We've got company.”

She nods to the secretary looking uncertainly over at them. The kid had been, and still was, sporting some pretty big psychological scars from the whole endeavour, which made his statement a gruelling struggle with his stiff tongue. Jay has been patient. She and Payne worked what they could from him at Louis’ place and told the kid to come back after a few hours at home to fill in some gaps. 

They take Greg to an interrogation room more for the privacy it’ll allow him than the security necessity. 

The first thing he told them at the Centre was how there were four other kids locked up with him. He can’t describe them very well. They were kept chained to the wall, the only light seeping in when someone entered or left, which always happened at night. The only thing he knows for certain about his captor is that it was a man.

Both detectives wait in silence seated on the same side of the table. Already they’ve been at it for a few hours since they were alerted of the ongoing kidnapping situation, and they’d wait in this room with Greg for several more if it squeezed out any information that got them inches closer to finding those kids.

“It was a big house. Brown, maybe grey.”

“That’s really good Greg,” Payne says as he notes it quickly on the pad in front of him.

Greg shifts in his seat and rubs at his neck. Payne is good at that. Jay would like to say he had a good teacher, but the truth is Payne was a naturally soothing demeanor before he ever joined the force.

“I remember the street name… something Mill Road…”

They wait. They encourage. It pays off.

“Old Mill Road, maybe?” Greg looks at them for an answer. 

They give it to him in nods and smiles.

When he leaves there’s nothing Jay wants to do more than march down the entire street and scout every brown and grey house until they find the kids. Unfortunately she’s human, and so is Payne, so they hand over the information to the night team for whatever use it will be and forgo the pizza for a tight turnaround sleep.

They arrive at Old Mill Road the next morning. All of the houses are brick, but at the end of the road is an unmistakably shit brown house. A mansion, modern and ostentatious amongst old money houses. 

The neighbours door has lace curtains. Jay taps the glass once before an elderly asian woman pushes them aside.

“Good morning, Ma’am,” Jay greets.

“Officers, oh my.” The woman presses a paper thin hand against her chest in a fluster.

They’re wearing dress uniform today to play the friendly neighbourhood coppers. It usually works better in these ritzy neighbourhoods than the nosy detective.

“We were on patrol when your garden beds caught the eye of my young partner here,” she gestures to Payne with an impish grin.

“Sure did,” Payne agrees smoothly. “I’ve never seen that colour of hydrangeas. How on earth did you manage them? And in this heat!”

Jay clears her throat to smother her amusement at the high note in Payne’s voice as he lays it on thick.

“Oh dear, what a sweetie you are. Well, the thing you need to know about hydrangeas is how they were first grown in Japan, known as the water vessel… “

They listen to her talk about flowers until sweat pools in the creases of their uniforms. Slowly they manage their task.

“Yes, knee pads really do come in handy. Your neighbours, do they plant any flowers?”

“Oh goodness, no. Gerard has gardeners come in twice a week. Takes all of the heart out of it, truly. You know the plants can tell?” Her bobbed salt and pepper hair swings when she shakes her head. “Oh no, Gerard Argent is too busy to pay mother earth any respect. Although,” She presses her lips together like she’s tasted something sour and lowers her voice, “he has this strange habit of walking his dog at night. I’ve been meaning to take a peak over there and see if he’s got any of those lilies of the nights. Oh! What a sight that would be! Can you imagine?”

“Quite,” Jay agrees. “And what could possibly keep Mr. Argent too occupied to tend to his flowerbeds?”

The woman, Miss Hirose as she’s introduced herself, grimaces deeper.

“That wretched business. He’s got trucks coming in all hours of the day carrying those weapons of his.”

“Weapons?” They perk up like dogs for a bone.

“You know, the armory business he’s had carrying on since his wife passed. Boys and their toys, quite barbaric if you ask me. Not you dears, you earn yours, but plain joe smoe carrying something he can’t handle, bah!” She shakes her head fiercely. “No good comes of that.”

Jay chooses not to correct the woman about their unarmed status and brings things to a close. Or tries to. 

“Right. Thank you so much for your time Miss Hirose, Liam is truly inspired. Have a good day now.”

Twenty overly sweaty minutes later they manage to extract themselves. They sit in the cruiser with the air conditioner on full blast, both sucking down water. It is blessedly silent.

They move on. Jay knocks on the solid black door with the side of her fist. It opens a quarter to reveal an older gentleman with a full head of white hair and deep set wrinkles. Isn’t it depressing, Jay thinks, to be closer to this man’s age than Payne’s.

“Gerard Thompson?”

“Present.”

“Officer’s Deakin and Payne.” She gestures to Payne and they display their badges, hopefully too quickly for Thompson to read the Detective where Officer should be. Technically it’s not a lie. “We’re here for a routine check in, make sure your license and inventory match up, that sort of thing. You should have received a phone call about our arrival.”

That part is a lie. 

Thompson pushes open the door and waves them in. “Unfortunately not. No bother, I’ll lead you to the armory.”

The house is immaculate inside. Polished floors and windows so clean they’re invisible. The walls are bare.

“Does your family live with you?”

Jay wishes she could see the man's face when he answers Payne.

“No. It was the plan originally, but there were some differences we couldn’t settle.”

“So you’ve got this whole place to yourself?” Jay asks.

Thompson peers over his shoulder.

“My staff are always underfoot, the upkeep is far too much for a single person, but yes. I am the sole resident of the grounds.”

His phrasing reveals he’s playing along with whatever they’re gunning for, and he must have known the second he answered the door they weren’t being altruistic, yet he still let them in. They enter a six car garage with three vehicles parked. A sedan, a truck, an SUV. All black, all European make. 

The other half of the garage is caged. They wait as Thompson unlocks a thick padlock on the chain link door.

A crash of cold water siphons every ounce of heat from Jay’s bones the moment she steps into the armoury cage. She can’t pinpoint what’s setting it off, but she’s been a cop long enough to know what it means. Something is not as it seems.

They flip through Thompson’s catalogue and licenses and the racks lining the wall. Everything matches up. His books are neat, up to date, and in every sense of the word, clean. They leave without lingering.

Jay and Payne shut their doors of the cruiser in tandem. Payne taps his finger against the steering wheel. Jay puts her elbow on the window sill and presses a hand to her mouth in thought. They sit. Wait.

Jay’s fingers fan out. “There was no dog. Miss Hirose said he walked his dog at night.”

Payne stops his tapping to point forward. “Greg said he wore a collar.”

Silence fills the car as they think about the sickness of humanity. They are nine kilometers away from the Centre. Jay pulls out the car computer, an excellent feature of patrol cars she doesn’t get to spend time in anymore, and starts filling out a warrant request. She’s interrupted by her phone vibrating in her pocket.

“Mother o’ mine,” Louis greets before she can say anything. “I’ve got an anonymous tip.”

“It’s not anonymous when I wrote the name on your birth certificate.”

“Would you rather I take my secrets to Officer Byrne?”

“Louis.”

“Okay, you’re still my favourite don’t worry. Your dead prostitute's name isn’t Billy Martin. It’s Ben Murs. And he’s not a prostitute, or just a prostitute, I guess. He was an IT consultant for Modest Tech.”

“Do I dare ask how you came into this knowledge?”

“Nope! Goodluck!”

The line goes dead. Jay closes her eyes and sighs long and deep in a manner she’s perfected over the years. Her bloody son. She calls in the information to the office and has one of the pencil pushers start running a background on the real name.

“Let’s swing by Twist’s address while we’re at it. Maybe he has more to say about Mr. Murs than he did Mr. Martin.”

The apartment building of their phone thief has oatmeal coloured walls and minivans with family stickers on the rear windows. They find the directory and knock on the second floor door labeled A. TWIST. The woman who opens it has thick salt and pepper hair and glowing green eyes.

“Good afternoon,” Jay says after a missed beat. “We’re looking for Arnold Twist. Is he available?”

“No,” the woman frowns. “Only an Anne Twist to be found here.” 

Jay shares a look with Payne.

“Mum! Who is it?” A female voice calls from inside.

“The police, honey. It’s fine.” She looks at them. “Can we step out?”

Jay and Payne back off so the woman has room to close the door behind her. They arrange themselves on either side, keeping both ways blocked.

“There seems to be some confusion. Earlier this week we apprehended a young man who gave the name Arnold Twist and this address as his own. Can you think of someone who would do that?”

Twist doesn’t pause when she replies, “No.”

The door opens and startles them all.

“Mum! You have to stop saying ‘the police’ everytime my boyfriend…” A brunette dimple cheeked girl stands in the doorway. She stops when she catches sight of them conjugated and shys back. “Oh. Real police. Sorry.”

Mrs. Twist glares at her daughter who sheepishly smiles at them, an exchange that reminds Jay vividly of Louis’ teenage years.

“This is my daughter, Gemma.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am. We’ll only be another moment with your mother.” Payne charms. The girl blushes easily, but then again, most people do for Payne.

“Sure thing, just let me know before you cart her away. Bye!”

She slips back into the apartment. Twist is serious the moment the door shuts.

“Is there a threat to my family? Should I make an identity theft claim?”

“You can’t think of a single reason why someone would have or use your details?”

Twist crosses her arms in a manner more insecure than defensive. Slowly she shakes her head after a moment of thought. 

“None. My work is contract based, most of my friends live out of town.” She glances at the door. “Gemma is the only family I have.”

The woman has a hard gaze when it returns to them, but her demeanor is sincere. The lines on her forehead reveal her worry, and her tone with her daughter had been a softly chiding tone Jay used herself regularly. Her gut is telling her: truth.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Twist. I would make the claim, but there’s no reason to believe you or your family are in any danger. Contact us if anything comes up.” Jay holds out a card.

They fall back into the cruiser.

“What a mess.”

Jay hums in agreement. She has the robust car computer open again on an update from the office.

“Looks like we’ve got an address for the victim, Ben Murs. If we stop now we can secure it and wait for forensics.”

Payne leans over to look at the map on the screen.

“That puts the good deli on the way back to the precinct.”

Jay peers at the screen like she has to double check and feigns innocence. “What a coincidence.”

They share a conspiring look as Payne starts the engine.

x

The thumping of his feet against the treadmill is the centre of his being. Nothing exists but his feet and the synthetic ground flying beneath him. There’s no drop of Niall’s blood. There’s no Katheryn Hudson with a wicked smile. There’s no Louis fucking Tomlinson with long fingers and hair he just wants to-

Harry stumbles as a shrill default phone jingle interrupts his pace. With a heavy and sweaty hand he hits the machine until it slows to a walk. Phone in one hand and towel in the other, he picks up and wipes the sweat stinging his eyes.

“Styles speaking,” He manages without panting.

He has to hold the phone away from his head so it doesn’t stick to his matted hair.

“Harry?”

The voice is on the brink of being recognizable, but looking at the phone shows a string of numbers instead of a contact name.

“It’s Ed, we had a class together a few years ago.”

Harry chokes on his own tongue. “Ed!”

There's a silent moment where Harry tries to crush the vivid pictures he associates the man with and struggles to find normal words.

“Long time. How’d things go after switching majors?”

Ed had been in law with Harry until he’d switched halfway through undergrad. At the time Harry had been little more than indifferent, but retrospectively he missed joking with the guy between lectures. And other things.

“Really good, actually. Got a job down in London. Somehow managed to strike myself a fiance.”

Harry looks up at his blank twelve foot ceilings like they’ll help erase the memory of Ed’s tongue in his ass. Yeah, no wonder how the guy managed.

“Way to go, Ed. Congrats.” And Harry finds that he means it, truly. 

“Thanks man. Listen, I’ve got a weird ask, but I’m running low on options. You went back to your hometown after school, right?”

“Yeah.”

Harry stops the machine and leans on the safety railing, preparing himself for anything. Ed was always a stand up guy, even when Harry cut their hookups off abruptly in one of his many denial fits. If anything, Harry owes him for staying decent.

“A close friend of mine lives in town, Jeff Azoff.”

Harry can’t help the sharp laugh that leaves him at the name. Of course the nicest guy he knows would be friends with the biggest arse he’s ever met. Harry’s been in the courtroom with Azoff on several occasions. Luckily they faced off less than a handful of times before Azoff started lecturing, so things never grew to be a full blown rivalry. It was enough to establish well-founded contempt.

“Yeah, I know. We met before he became a jackass so I’m stuck with him. Issue is, I haven’t heard from him for a few days. Wouldn’t be weird except he’s supposed to be visiting tomorrow and he hasn’t even booked the flight.”

Harry drinks from his water bottle as Ed talks. He steps off the treadmill and sits on the foot of it.

“Not to sound like a jilted lover, but could you stop by and remind him I can get that Porsche of his impounded if he doesn’t pick up?”

Harry thinks of the look on Jeff’s face if he were to show up at his door. He’ll do it for that alone.

“Yeah, no worries Ed. Anytime.”

Anything to keep him busy. The firm allowed him to use a week's vacation to spend time with his mother and be available for the investigation if anything came of it, but he can’t spend every second hovering over Maura’s shoulder, or Mrs. Deakin’s for that matter.

“Thanks man, I owe you. I'll text the address.”

The message pings through seconds later. Harry rolls his eyes at the street name. Of fucking course Azoff would live within spitting distance.

X

Jay and Payne park in front of the building of their victim. There’s construction happening on the street and a temporary ‘No Parking’ sign for it, but they’re the cops, so they park anyway. All the men in hardhats are working metres down at the corner of the block and Jay assumes they aren’t going to be longer than an hour, probably. Cold cuts wait for no one.

The doorman lets them in. They take the stairs like they’re trying to prove something but Jay knows it wouldn’t make a difference. After the house visits and sitting in the cruiser for hours she’s exhausted and trying not to appear so. Damn Ben Murs and his thirteenth floor view. 

The exhaustion disappears the second they step into the right hallway and see the door ajar. Both detectives put a hand on their guns. Jay takes lead.

She nudges the door to reveal an open plan apartment and Arnold Twist, the fake one, jamming something into his backpack. Through thick brown locks the boy sees them enter and he sprints. Jay follows in pursuit towards the patio, but the boy already had the glass door open and he’s over the railing in an impressive show of agility that would destroy Jay’s knees.

From balcony to balcony the kid hops down. Payne is nowhere in sight. Jay waits. She keeps post on the patio to keep the kid from trying to come back up.

Finally Payne bursts through the bottom building door just as the boy reaches the ground. From above Jay watches the short chase across the street. Payne almost has his hands on the guy at the first corner when a construction worker steps out and swings a meaty fist. The boy drops, his head bouncing on the cement.

Jay curses loudly and reaches for her radio to call in an ambulance. So much for further questioning.

x

She doesn't run. It’s a skipping jog she’s perfected from years of being a nurse. These hallways are more familiar than those of her home and she navigates them on instinct.

“We’ve already done a comparison, Maura. It’s not him.” Harry keeps pace with her.

“We? Who’s we?”

“Mrs. Deakin previously arrested him for theft. Louis stopped by, too. It was a consensus.”

Ah yes, the team probably trying to protect her from more harm by not telling her they had a suspected boy in custody. She shakes her head and takes another turn. “Was there a DNA test? Hm?”

She rounds on Harry. He doesn’t reply, looking cowed and not one inch of the intimidating defence lawyer he’s become. Oh, she loves this boy to bits. She’s never once regretted taking him in, not once questioned if she’d made the right choice or what may or may not have happened. His mother would have done the same for her. Still, he can be such an idiot.

“No, I thought not.” She spins and takes the last few steps between her and room two-oh-four. “There’s no way to know for sure he’s not…”

She slows her steps as she enters the room. The lights have been dimmed for the night. She approaches the bed hesitantly, tears welling in her eyes.

“Nialler.”

She pushes the thick curls off of his bruised up face and smooths them back with a wet sigh. After a moment she closes her eyes and wipes at the dampness. She looks at Harry frozen in the doorway. She shakes her head.

“He’s not my boy.” She gently pats the sleeping boy's hand. “But he’s somebody’s.”

She allows herself to feel the wave of disappointment for one more moment, squeezes the hand of the poor injured boy in the bed, and steps away. She joins Harry in the hallway and crosses her arms to hug herself.

“You probably think I’m ridiculous,” she says, clearing her throat so her voice doesn’t catch on the wave of emotion she's riding. “I had to know, Harry. I had to see for myself.”

“It's okay.”

Then he’s right there, taking her into his arms and enveloping her into a hug. A new wave of hot tears start rolling and smear against his shirt. It’s been so long, how can it still feel like she’s losing him all over again?

“It’s the hardest part,” she mumbles into his solid chest with a shaky breath. “Not knowing.”

When Harry was young she used to hold him like this as he cried for his mother, her own arms wrapped around thin shoulders to create a safe nest for him. Now he towers over her, twice as broad in the shoulders. She can’t remember when they switched places.

x

The warrant comes through for Gerard Thompson’s house. Jay and Payne arrive bright and early with a team to help canvas the place.

In the cruiser Jay checks her personal cell one last time for a missed call that’s not there and says, “Remind me to call Louis. Usually when he doesn’t call by noon he needs a loan and doesn’t know how to ask for it.”

Payne nods as he double checks his loaded gear vest one last time. 

They step out. No one answers the front door. Jay casts a look around. No one is on the streets, not an unusual case given it’s a weekday and everyone’s either off to work or retired and lounging out of the heat. A flutter of lace in the neighbour’s doorway gives her the impression that just because she can’t see them doesn’t mean there aren’t eyes looking. They don’t need nosy neighbours coming to gawk if there’s a scene. This is a heavily armed man, afterall.

“Three men stay here, the rest follow.” She leads them around to the back. There are cameras on every angle, small black eyes she can’t do anything about. A creeping sense of dread crawls up the back of her neck. She can’t guarantee Thompson won't come out with a bloody bazooka and the men she has are nowhere near prepared enough to handle much more than a shotgun. 

Something had told her not to rush, not to wait for the second squad that would have taken two weeks to prepare. Too long. The memory of the icy cold chill in the basement had pushed her to make the call. If she’s wrong, she knows it’s not only her head, but the lives of the team supporting her.

The backyard is just as pristine as the front. A crystalline swimming pool glitters in the sun and throws sharp rays into her eyes. She squints past to see the patio door wide open.

They file into the house, announcing themselves as they go.

“Detectives. In the garage.” A voice cracks through the radio.

Jay turns from the kitchen and navigates herself to the garage. The men who aren’t holding a room collect in a row behind her.

“Sweet Jesus,” Payne swears over her shoulder in a drawl he rarely slips.

One by one the men swear and groan as they enter the garage. A few turn back out of the room. Jay doesn’t blame them.

What she can only assume is Gerard Thompson’s body lays in a mangled heap beside the bloody Jeep. Numerous bloody tyre tracks and pieces of flesh on the grill suggest the man was struck several times before he fell and was run over a few more times for good measure, given the overall flatness of some vital organs. The room reeks of the mess and residual exhaust.

There’s a trail of blood leading towards the armoury cage. Jay leaves the men to gawk and spectate while she follows the line of blood. It’s not drops fallen from a wound or a trail leading to a drain, it’s delibertely been drawn with something. It squiggles and falters in some places, but there’s enough of it to follow a jagged line all the way to the padlocked door. It ends there. Jay peers past the chainlink into the gun cage.

Everything is immaculately kept, as it was when she first put eyes on it. Something still sends chills down her spine. She pulls out the bump key on her belt and inserts it halfway into the lock. She breathes in deep. On her exhale she pushes the key in and catches the split second of the bump to rotate, unlocking it.

With trepidation she steps into the cage. Past the racks of weapons and ammunition with a keen eye on their shining faces, not a speck of blood to be found, until she reaches the far end. She looks towards the rest of the garage on the other side of the fence.

From the outside the garage is easily a six car space. Inside Thompson has parked three and used one stall for the armory. Two stalls of space unaccounted for, meaning the cement wall she stands at now is not where it should be. There’s a metal framed glass case screwed into the wall. A closer look reveals a smear of blood maring the display glass at hip height, the only sign of imperfection. 

Jay looks down to her feet.

A dismembered finger lays on the ground, flesh shredded where it once attached to a knuckle, like it’s been dragged. Someone had one hell of a pitch to get it through the chain link all the way to this end. Next to it Jay sees a scratch sketched into the cement floor. It’s circular, like a compass would draw forty degrees on paper, or more accurately, a small rock lodged under a door as it swung open. Jay grabs an edge of the case and pulls.

Things get chaotic after that. There were three children locked up behind Thompson’s armory. They’re rushed to medical and sent with officers to identify their families. Jay and Payne shoot a few theories on the narrative for Thompson’s death as it’s photographed and don’t talk about the looks on the kids' faces.

They’re wrapping up when they get an unfavourable call from the hospital. The false Arnold Twist woke from his sedation and ducked the standby officer on him. The upside, they still have the computer he’d been trying to steal, the one supposedly belonging to Ben Murs, and a tech is close to cracking it open.

They meet with the tech at the precinct. It’s the boy, the one always making eyes at Payne, but this time his eyes are glued to the screen.

“Must have had a feeling something was going to happen because he wiped his computer. Luckily,” the kid shoots them a smile like an overeager golden retriever puppy, “I managed to locate his backup files on the cloud. If you guys hang out for a few more seconds I’ll have the password… now.”

Jay and Payne lean in as documents start to pop open on the screen. A list of names starts to scroll by them, and then another opens and does the same.

“What the bloody hell,” Jay mutters under her breath.

A small pop-up dings, declaring ‘Auto Termination’ and a loading bar that rapidly fills.

“Shite, oh shite,” the kid types furiously at the keys to no use.

The automated sound of a camera shutter sounds beside Jay. Payne with his phone snapping at the window of names like the smartarse he is. Jay can hardly unlock her phone without pulling out her reading specs. A millisecond later the screen goes black. The kid hangs his head. He’s got one of those modern haircuts and the position shows off the meticulous fade of his hairline. Probably cost him a day's wages. Ridiculous. 

“I’ll, uh, keep digging to see if there’s any traces left.” He shakes his head. “This guy was in the tech world, he really knew what he was doing even for a rush job like this.”

Payne pats him on the shoulder. “Thanks Kyle.”

Jay and Payne fall into their adjacent desk chairs and recline as much as possible. Jay hangs her head backwards and closes her eyes. Vivid flashes of the day’s excitement play behind her lids. Thompson’s body, the ragged finger, the sheer terror on the captives' faces. 

And the disappointment. 

A small nagging cry of disappointment when she saw the kids and knew none of them were Niall Horan.

She needs a cuppa.

She needs to call Louis. Then she’ll probably need something stronger than tea.

x

Zayn hasn’t had a phone call from Louis outside of holidays in years. Seven years, if he counted. Louis calls him after seven years out of the blue and asks what he’s up to. He’s grocery shopping. Because he’s an adult, with a mortgage, and a car, and a wife, and a career. On Monday nights he stocks up for the week, because it’s less busy than Sunday and it gives him a reason to be out of the house by himself. Perrie hates grocery shopping. Can’t stand the crying children and inevitable traffic jam of wayward carts.

He’s in the frozen vegetable isle when Louis calls and asks if he’s busy tomorrow.

“Look, I know this is weird and you don't have to if there’s something else you got planned, but I’ve got a friend who could use someone to talk to. Someone not me. You remember Nick? I think you met during my open house thing. He was still in highschool back then but he’s doing great now, a real help actually.” 

There’s a moment's silence. Zayn can’t take his eyes off of the plastic bags behind freezer doors. He can never decide if it’s work getting the veg already mixed or each one individually. One when Louis starts speaking again does he think he maybe was waiting on Zayn to reply. 

“I just, this job is hard, and I know your job is too, and surprisingly filled with urine and other bodily fluids which you wouldn’t think, but so is the Centre. So you two would have a lot in common maybe, and he’d probably feel reassured to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to always have to be focused, you know?” He chuckles nervously. “What do you think? Coffee? On me? I won't be there but I’ll send him with a giftcard-”

“It’s fine, Louis.” He cuts in, “I can pay for a cup of coffee.”

“Oh, fuck. I did not mean it like-”

“Louis,” He huffs, “It’s okay, I know. Should I pick him up at the Centre?”

The mic fuzzes when Louis releases a big sigh.

“Yeah, that would be amazing, Zayn, thank you. He means so much to me, I just forget how hard life can be for someone without my stamina.”

“Okay, I’ll be there. Oh, and Louis?”

“Yeah?”

“There is no other job that could possibly contain more surprise urine than mine.”

Louis laughs, bright and loud like he did when they were kids and Zayn feels a pool of warmth glow in his chest and heat his cheeks in a way he isn’t used to. Zayn can’t remember actually deciding to agree to this, but he decides not to look too closely at it. After they hang up it takes him several minutes to decide. He ends up getting them separated. 

Nick is not what he was expecting. He’s not the timid boy behind solem eyes Zayn remembers from their brief first meeting. He’s smartly styled with a perfect quiff and a wide smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. Zayn feels he’s arrived at an interview underdressed in comfy ripped jeans and trainers. 

He defaults to a chain cafe because he doesn’t know anything local and tries for the simple chatter he barely manages to hold with coworkers while they wait in line. It’s painfully awkward and Zayn starts to question why Louis would have him, of all people, try to talk to someone. 

“How long have you been working at the Centre?”

“A while.”

Zayn had assumed the silence during the car ride had been due to shyness, the bluntness of Nick’s tone makes him think otherwise.

He tries again. “Do you enjoy it?”

“That is completely irrelevant.” The vehemence in his voice startles Zayn. He eyes the overhead menu board like it’ll tell him what button of Nick’s he pressed and how he can immediately un-press it. “I’m essential to keeping the Centre and Louis floating. I’m not going to abandon either just because the works a bit shit.”

“You don’t think Louis could run things himself?”

Zayn remembers when Louis held the open house. One of the last times he saw him, actually. He’d been stressed and underslept but those weren’t unusual back then, and his smile when he’d started talking about his vision for the place had been unmatched. Everyone could see Louis truly loved that place. Zayn couldn’t imagine him not doing everything he could to keep helping kids.

Nick rolls his eyes in a flutter of thick lashes. Did he use mascara? Zayn used to, for a bit. Maybe he should start again.

“You know this whole Niall thing?”

Zayn jumps at the sound of the name. He gives a tight lipped nod, remembering getting the call from Mrs. Deakin sounding a bit recited, like she’d already had the same conversation several times over. Zayn wasn’t surprised by that, he would be pretty far on the list, he assumes.

He hadn’t expected to hear anything more about it. Niall was dead. Whatever’s happening now will blow over. He gives a shaky smile to the barista and orders, trying to regroup, but Nick keeps talking.

“Louis’ handling it as well as a drunkard handles an empty bottle. He’s fixating. I’ve seen him like this before. When I first met him he was a mess over something, drove himself to exhaustion over setting up the Centre in order to avoid whatever the hell it was. It’s like that, only this time it’s not a place he’s fixating on, it’s Niall.”

Zayn’s fingers are so clumsy they need his entire focus as he fumbles with change. He keeps his head down until Nick steps forward to order his own drink. Zayn takes a steadying breath in the reprive.

“I’m sure he’s being a bit odd, Louis always was an oddball,” Zayn forces. “Once he realizes there’s nothing to find he’ll be himself.”

“You don’t get it,” Nick insists. “He’s completely shut everyone out. His mum keeps calling the Centre because he’s never answering his cell. I don’t think he’s even eating.”

Zayn shakes his head, this guy is worrying over nothing.

“Louis can take care of himself, he’s an adult.”

“You haven’t talked to the guy in years. How can you be so sure?” Nick narrows his eyes and they’re so accusing, like he thinks Zayn is the reason Louis doesn’t have his shit together.

A spike of fear shoots through him at the thought that maybe Nick knows. Louis would have had to tell him, but he wouldn’t. Right? Nick's words echo in his mind, stinging with truth. Besides this week, Zayn hasn’t spoken to him in years. How much faith can he have that Louis will honour their decades old promise?

The uncertainty causes a snap.

“Because I’m doing it!” Zayn hisses. “I was there too and I’m doing just fine. Louis is going to be fine.”

They call his name at the counter for his drink and he ignores it. He pushes the door and takes a big gulp of air. In the car his hands vibrate on the steering wheel. Taking calming breaths he buckles his seatbelt and leans over to push open the passenger door. Nick appears with two cups in hand. They sit in silence for the entire drive back to the Centre and say a short goodbye when Nick gets out.

Zayn makes it six blocks away before he pulls over and digs through his pockets for the two things he needs right now.

Harry answers immediately.

“Zayn.”

“Harry,” he volleys back, hesitating before he bites the bullet. “Can we meet?”

Zayn walks into Harry’s house twenty minutes later, chin held high. It’s nice. Much nicer than the place they rented together in university, and even the modest place he owns now with Perrie. The worktop he leans on in the kitchen is polished white stone.

“Thank you,” he murmurs when Harry wordlessly presses a glass of wine into his hands. It’s sweet and refreshing and exactly what he needs to have this conversation.

Somehow they’ve struck up a cordial friendship in the past few years. They tell each other their plans for the week, how the days have been going, the household projects they hope to do over the weekend and never manage to actually start. It’s a civil and grounding routine. This visit is not going to be one of those times.

Zayn looks into his glass and wishes to drown in it.

“Do you remember what you were doing when Niall went missing?”

Harry freezes like he expected him too. This isn’t them. They don’t talk about the past. Cautiously Harry presses a cork stop into the bottle of wine.

“Mrs. Deakin and I walked back to the car for the first aid kit when I scraped my knee.” Harry says curiously, like he’s being tested. 

Zayn smiles shakily at the memory he’d forgotten. Harry, ten and wild, had been showing off and tried climbing a tree. He made it less than two yards before his shoe slipped and the bark of the tree tore through his knee on the slide down. Louis had demanded Harry go get his mum, and it must have really hurt because Harry agreed after the weakest of arguments.

Louis and Harry had disappeared into the trees towards the log Louis’ mum was sitting on just around the bend. They left squabbling over what superhero Harry was, a classic case of Superman vs Batman.

Zayn had stayed with Niall. An easy task, really. He’d been eleven years old, which was like a million years older than five so he could definitely watch over him. Plus, Niall adored him. The thought makes him tip the wine glass far back.

“Do you know where I was?”

Harry frowns. Zayn doesn’t dare look at it, but he knows the face he’s making from the years they spent together. He can feel Harry’s mind unbalancing in a dangerous tilt.

“You were with Louis.” He states.

The wine glass in Zayn’s hand starts to blur from the water in his eyes. His body feels cemented in place as Harry walks around the kitchen island until they’re toe to toe.

“You were with Louis,” Harry repeats urgently.

Tears spill in hot trails on Zayn’s face when he closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“No.” 

He makes the mistake of opening his eyes to find a livid Harry centimetres away. “No, I wasn’t.”

“That’s what you told the police.” He says like a demand for her to take it back. “Louis said-“

“He lied.” Zayn interrupts. “I made him, because I didn’t want you to know. I thought…” he stumbles with the words on his tongue and takes a deep breath of air to push the rest of them out. “I was embarrassed.”

“You were-“

Zayn flinches at the yell. Harry catches it and cuts himself off quickly. Zayn blinks to clear the tug of de ja vu from a very different time.

Harry’s heavy breathing reveals his struggle to reign himself in. He aska through gritted teeth, “what happened?”

The glass starts vibrating with how hard Zayn’s holding it.

“You two left and I stayed with Niall. He always wanted to hold my hand, especially when he was scared and he was really worried about you… “ he loses his voice when he sees the stricken look on Harry’s face and has to swallow.

“I was hugging him to calm him down and he kissed my cheek. It’s… fuck it’s so stupid. He kissed my cheek and I pushed him down because I was a silly little boy. He was five years old and he probably kissed his dad all the time but I shoved him and he started crying.” He wipes his eyes. “Louis saw it. He was walking back and saw me standing over Niall. I felt like a monster for making him cry. I ran. I just…” He motions with his hand, “ran away from them.”

“You told me you were playing hide and seek.”

And Zayn hates that tone of voice. The one that sounds like he’s betrayed him, when Harry was the one… but that doesn’t have a place here. He crosses his arms and picks at the skin of his bicep.

“Louis came after me. I think he told Niall to go back to his mum. He must have forgotten his mum was in the car with you.”

“It’s not my fault.”

Zayn scoffs a humourless laugh at Harry’s instantly defensive tone.

“No. It’s mine.”

Silence hangs in the air. Like a helium balloon it swells, stretching to its limits. Zayn’s nose is dripping and he hates having to keep sniffling so it doesn’t run.

“Zayn,” Harry says so low it’s near a whisper, yet the sound of it pops the silence and startles him. 

He feels ridiculous. Harry waits as he scrubs his face with his hands to wipe the tears and snot from his face in a futile effort to collect himself. Like facing a guillotine he meets Harry’s eye.

“You should have told the truth, but it’s not your fault.”

Zayn’s head starts to shake because it is, that’s the whole reason he kept silent about it. Why it’s eaten him alive for twenty years. Harry takes Zayn’s hand in his, dislodging his nails from where they’ve pierced his skin and left bloody tracks. Harry’s hands are too warm.

“We were kids. It’s not your fault.”

His gentleness undoes him. Sobs rip from Zayn’s chest, but they aren’t of pain or guilt. They’re full of relief. 

They end up on the sofa eating Harry’s leftover spaghetti for lunch. There’s more than enough for the two of them, he still can’t measure pasta to save his life.

“I’m sorry I waylaid your day.” Zayn says as he tucks his toes under his thighs. Harry shrugs.

“Took the day off anyway. An old friend asked for a favour.”

After the comfortable position they’ve found, the tightness in his voice piques Zayn’s interest.

“Oh?” He’s trying to sound cute and innocent in a way he usually manages. He knows he’s succeeded when Harry rolls his eyes.

“I have to relay a message to some asshole school teacher.”

Laughter bursts from Zayn’s lips and tears of a very different kind swell in the corners of his eyes.

“You’re going to a school?”

Harry glares at him over a fork full of noodles.

“You look like a murderer on a good day. A single man too young to have a teenage child approaching a high school? They’re going to turn you around before you come within fifty feet.”

Harry tosses his dishes on the coffee table and stands. “Then I guess there’s only one thing to do.” 

There’s a slant to his lips that Zayn hasn’t seen in a long time, makes him look younger. It promises mischief.

“What are you thinking, Mr. Horan?”

“I think you’ll have to accompany me, Mr. Horan, to the future school of our sweet young daughter whom we love dearly.”

“You’re not serious.”

Harry lifts his eyebrows in challenge.

“You’ve got a ring, they won’t look for mine, and you might witness me punching Jeff Azoff in the face.”

“Azoff?” Zayn arches a brow. 

Harry nods with a grin, knowing he’s hooked him. The clock over his shoulder reads half past noon. If they leave now Zayn will be home in plenty of time to make dinner for Perrie.

“Okay,” he sets his dishes down. “I’m in.”

x

The teachers know shit all and Harry is ready to punch anybody at this point. When he took the request from Ed he thought it would be an excuse to expel some pent up tension by pushing around Jeff. Forty minutes into politely questioning teachers about the school amenities and then weaseling in a question or two about where they could find one of the teachers in the directory have left him sour.

Away on holiday, out with the flu, visiting distant family, on a retreat after a breakdown Miss Jones saw coming a mile away. Wherever he is, it’s clear his colleagues have no idea. He uses the last resort.

“Harry,” Zayn hisses.

He keeps walking towards a group of girls giggling by the bike racks. They hush into whispers as he gets close.

“Hi, I’m a legal colleague of Mr. Azoff. Do you know where he is?”

The girls look at each other before it’s somehow decided who will respond.

“He doesn’t tell us shit,” a tough looking blond says.

“How long has he been away?”

The girls look at each other uncertainly, communicating in their minds somehow.

“Wednesday?” One of them shrugs.

It’s the best he’s going to get and he gives a smile tight with contempt.

“All right. Thank you, girls.”

As he walks he looks to the side, eyesight unfocused on the tree lined field but his ears angled towards the girls. He catches someone’s rather snide remark.

“Maybe he should take a look in Kendall Jenner’s bed.”

The girls break out into laughter.

He looks forward and returns to a disgruntled Zayn. He’s standing with his arms crossed, glaring. Harry takes his last steps towards him quickly so there are millimetres between them and he speaks first.

“I need you to distract the principal for awhile.”

Zayn narrows his eyes. His chin has to tilt up in order to face him. There’s a fire in his eyes Harry hasn’t seen in years. Not since their explosive days when the hurt was fresh and feelings fierce. Instinctively it strikes a chord.

“Why?”

Harry’s fists punch into his jacket pockets. He’s being a defensive shit and he knows it, but he does it anyway.

“I need her out of the office. Will you do it?” He challenges.

He watches Zayn silently debate.

“Fine.” He says shortly to show he’s not happy about it before he marches off.

Harry turns and watches through windows as Zayn approaches the principal. Through the cement and glass it’s impossible to see what they say, but soon enough the principal directs Zayn out of the office with confident steps and proud lift of her shoulders. Zayn catches his eye before following.

Harry exhales once his ex is out of sight. There’s no time to regret being an idiot, he tells himself, and rounds the corner to enter the building. He passes no one on the way to the principal's office. The desktop is unlocked. Within seconds he has Kendall Jenner’s file open and writes the address onto a sticky note. He closes out of the programme and leaves. 

One of the administrative staff smiles at him. He doesn’t stop to return the gesture.

Five minutes pass before Zayn walks through the double doors of the school and walks straight past him. Harry kicks off of the cold brick wall he’s been leaning on and follows to the car.

“Did you have fun playing mission impossible?” Zayn asks in a huff that makes Harry itch to roll his eyes.

“Not over yet. Girls mentioned someone who might know more.”

Zayn gives him an disapproving look with thin lips, but he doesn’t complain.

The house they park in front of is bland. Harry walks up the path and notices the recycling bin full of empty cans. A young woman yanks open the door with an expectant arch to her eyebrows.

“Yes?”

Harry tries for a smile.

“Hello, is Kendall Jenner home?”

The woman stares blankly at him.

“Who?”

Her curls bounce with every word she speaks like a cartoon. Harry shifts his weight, impatient. He recalls the numbers he saw on screen and glances surreptitiously at the numbers beside the door. They match. He’s certain enough not to check the sticky note he has jammed in his pocket.

“Kendall Jenner? Teenager, student at Tarron High?”

The woman shakes her head and her hair swings.

“No idea-“

“Who is it?” A male voice calls fiercely.

“None of your business, fatass!” The woman yells into the house. “No idea who you’re talking ‘bout. Bye.”

The door shuts inches from his face.

“Any luck?” Zayn asks, perched against the car when he returns.

“No.”

This is stupid. Jeff’s probably on a golf course somewhere laughing with old friends of his father and greasing palms. It should not be that hard to find him. He catches Zayn glancing at his watch. Zayn sees he’s been caught in the act and grimaces.

“Perrie. I have to be home before her.”

And there he is. The timid Zayn that calls Harry once a week to talk absently about dusting baseboards, no fire left.

He wants to ask. Wants to know why the woman can’t make her own dinner for once. Wants to know why Zayn always hangs up the phone as soon as he hears the door and never takes Harry up on the offer of meeting in person. He lets a hot pebble of anger grow on his tongue and swallows it down, burning a path to his stomach. He nods and stares out at the road.

Harry’s keys crush into his hand as he rests it on the hood of his car, standing at the open driver door when they arrive at his house. With steady eyes he watches Zayn hop into his own car and reverse down the driveway. As soon as his car turns the first corner Harry throws himself into his driver's seat. His tyres rip against the pavement as he tears the opposite way.

The school is quiet when he arrives. Classes have been let out in his absence, only stragglers left behind with their heads down in books or phones. He sits in the car and watches the windows. When no one passes for five minutes he gets out.

The receptionist notices him immediately with a smile.

“Are you back for another chat with the principal? I’m afraid she’s in a meeting with the staff.”

Harry’s face feels tight as he tries to smile back, slowing but not stopping.

“Must have dropped my sunglasses in her office. Do you mind if I check for them?”

And he’s through the open office door before she can reply. He knocks the door closed behind him so it shields him from view and pulls open the student directory programme he’d used to Kendall Jenner’s files. His eyes jump around the screen, scanning for what he remembers seeing.

Finally he locates the document, a copy of Mrs. Jenner’s license with a photo of the woman who answered the door, and hits print. The noise of the machine firing up makes him glance at the door. When it stays closed he takes a deep breath. He exits the programme on the computer and steps away from the desk to nearly run into the principle as she enters the door.

“Oh, back again?”

It takes everything in him not to look at the paper sitting in the printing tray behind her. He can’t think of a single thing to say or do to distract her long enough to grab it.

“Sorry, ma’am. Thought I left my sunglasses behind.”

They share a moment of silent acknowledgement that he is still halfway behind the desk and his hands are empty.

“No luck,” he murmurs and walks past her out the door.

The receptionist's desk is in front of him, but there’s a small side hallway leading to more offices on his right. He ducks into one of the offices and watches. It doesn’t take long for his mind to catch up with his actions. What the fuck is he doing? Jeff Azoff is not in his favour, and Ed wasn’t going to expect him to actually locate the jerk. 

Still. 

Harry’s feet stay rooted where they are. He needs to know.

There are too many unanswered questions in his life, this one thing was supposed to be simple and he’s not going to walk away when the answer has to be close. So in the doorway of some Vice Principal’s office he lingers and waits for the Principal to walk out of her office with her nose in a stapled packet of papers.

Harry leaps out of hiding and swings into her office. It’s his lucky day because the paper on top of the printer is still face down and has the face of a woman who owes him answers on it. The heeled footsteps of the Principal head his way. He’s trapped. There is no way to explain this. The voice of the secretary chirps up and the steps falter outside the door. It buys him seconds. His eyes scan the room wildly for something, anything. The open window.

Zayn’s comment about Mission Impossible floats through his mind. He sighs deeply through his nose and starts towards it. He’s never going to tell him about the small adrenaline rush and how much, once he’s finally outside and out of danger of being caught, he might actually smile and hum the theme song back to his car. It takes herculean willpower not to rev the engine as he pulls onto the street.

The woman gives him the same blank stare when she whips the door open. He holds up the piece of paper with her face on it.

“Kendall Jenner. She was registered at the school with your name on the registration, Mrs. Jenner.” He addresses her pointedly.

“Who’s that?” The same man from before yells from inside.

“Not your fucking buisness.”

She uses all of the hundred and ten pounds she has to push Harry back and slams the door behind her. She glares at him with piercing brown eyes.

“Who do you think you are? Some meat head man that didn’t get his nuts off just right?”

His eyebrows skyrocket. She reflects his confusion when she notices his reaction.

“What, you the police or something?”

“No.”

She narrows her eyes at his flat answer. They’re at an impasse, he realizes. He doesn’t want to say more about why he’s here, and given her behaviour, neither does she. She steps back to the door.

“She doesn’t live here. That’s all you need to know.”

The door slams shut.

The paper crinkles in Harry’s fisted hands on his way back to the car. He’s about to throw it into the recycling bin on the curb when a photo he didn’t notice before catches his eye. His fingers pull it smooth to show the header of the student file and a school photo in the top corner that must be Kendall. She’s a brunette, hair longer than the girl he’s just spoken to and they look absolutely nothing alike. Bells go off.

He looks closer at the grainy photo the size of his thumb nail. The Centre. When he met Louis at the Centre he’d been talking with her before he talked to Harry. He needs to talk to Louis.

Harry’s colliding with the ground before he knows he’s falling. His head snaps painfully against the hard packed dirt under thin grass and his chest seizes as the wind is knocked out of him. There’s a guy in a suit standing over him, but Harry can’t see him clearly due to the tears and lack of oxygen.

“Stay away from Kendall,” the guy growls.

Harry is left wheezing on the grass for minutes before he can sit up, exhausted and sore and still shaking from the surprise. On autopilot he gets to his car and struggles to remember what’s next.

Right.

“Find Louis,” he mutters and nods to himself. He starts the car.

Halfway to the Centre he realizes he can’t remember why he’s going there. He pulls over. Patting his pockets he finds his phone and wallet are still on him, but the paper is gone. Fists clenched on the steering wheel he stews in frustration. 

There’s absolutely nothing. 

Maybe calling Louis would jog his memory, but as he pulls out his phone he remembers what Zayn told him this morning.

Louis kept the secret. It doesn’t make a difference, he tries to tell himself, but there’s no way to know. Maybe if they’d told the truth it somehow would have helped them find Niall. Maybe they would have looked in the right spot. And if Zayn had run off when Louis showed up, that meant… Louis was the last person to see Niall before he disappeared.

Harry can’t pinpoint the emotion he feels, but the glowing ember of rage becomes scorching in the pit of his stomach, heating his blood until it feels like lava boils in his veins. Grinding his teeth he whips the car into a u-turn and heads home, anticipating the satisfying slam of his feet on the treadmill.

x

“Detective.”

“Detective,” Jay parrots back without looking away from the screen.

“You owe me a hotdog dinner.”

Jay perks up. “What? Where?”

She takes her glasses off, thin wiry things she’s constantly worried about breaking, and faces Payne. On Payne’s first day Jay had sworn nothing ever happened in this small town, and then they found a dead body. Payne’s first. Jay had taken him out for a hotdog as compensation. It always worked to cheer up Louis. Somehow it became tradition. A hotdog dinner meant a dead body.

Payne puts his hands on his hips.

“You won’t believe this. Gerard Thompson’s back lawn. Not much to go on yet, decomp was pretty far along, but by height they say an adult male.”

Jay frowns, names and numbers and facts floating around her head as she tries to sort them into an order that might make sense.

“What the heck is going on here?”

Payne raises his arms in surrender. Jay turns back to the computer screen with a scowl. She’s been searching for the original copy of the Niall Horan files for so long her neck and shoulders are stiff. There was a transfer from paper to digital work base ten years ago and it’s not uncommon to find files that didn’t get transferred over. Especially cases considered closed.

“I’m going for a walk downstairs.” She checks her watch. “Dinner at Mo’s in forty.”

After a fist bump from Payne she shrugs on her jacket. The basement always had a bit of a chill.

The fluorescents are dim and buzz uncomfortably above her. The boxes are sagging with age and overloaded with papers. She grunts with effort as she shuffles the right one out and balances it on her raised knee in order to flip through and find the file. She slaps it on top of the box and wobbles a bit, holding an awkward pose with the heavy box. She flips it open.

“Holy fu-”

The slam of the box hitting the ground drowns out everything else. Papers explode in a cloud of dust throughout the narrow alley she stands in. The Niall Horan file left in her wavering hand, page after page, is blank.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick shifts his weight from foot to foot in front of the precinct. Officers pass him by with morning coffees in their hands, chatting amiably or keeping heads down in thought. He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath of fresh air. He turns his head to the blue sky. Deliberately stares at the sun and squints until he has to tear his eyes away in pain. After one last lung full of crisp morning air he strides confidently to the front desk and asks for Jay Deakin.

“She’s out on a case. Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

It’s a stuttering halt to what he’d imagined. Nick hesitates, tongue heavy in his mouth, then shakes his head.

“No, I’ll wait.”

He’s only met Mr. Deakin briefly during her quick and sporadic visits to the Centre to see Louis. She seemed nice. She had kind eyes, and she raised Louis. That meant a lot more than anything else he knew about her. As one of the last choices of free will he had, he chose her.

So he sat in the squeaky vinyl chair across from the counter and stared at the peeling speckled linoleum floor and let it flood his entire vision and mind until nothing, not even the thought of what he was about to do, could whisper in his ear.

“Nick.”

He startles. A ghost stands at the counter. He waves a reluctant older couple on, says he’ll meet them at the car, and Nick watches them go realizing they must be his parents. He looks solid. Not a ghost. Nick’s throat constricts.

Greg walks closer, glancing around before speaking quietly.

“Whatever you’re about to do,” he looks Nick in the eyes as he whispers urgently, “don’t.” 

“But,” Nick starts, unable to keep it in. How could he know?

Greg silences him with an adamant shake of his head.

“He was a monster and he’s dead. You don’t deserve anymore chains, you were as used as the rest of us.”

He walks away in the footsteps of his parents, his eyes holding Nick’s until he pushes through the door and disappears into the streaming sunlight. Nick’s will cracks. 

He spent years in a dark room with a collar on his neck. Freedom was promised for a price. Every breath of fresh air and day spent in the sun was in exchange for the suffering of others. He can still remember the day he helped kidnap Greg, five years ago. Five years of living in a brightly lit room on the second floor of the Centre while Greg was locked in the garage.

He’s seen the news, knows Gerard is dead. Dead. He’s not going to lock Nick up or force him to approach kids on the street. He told Nick it was the only way out and he’d been so desperate to be free, past caring for the cost. How can Greg understand that? Nick never had the chance to apologize, how can Greg say he doesn’t deserve it if he doesn’t really know?

He stands on shaky knees and forces himself to leave without rushing. Maybe Greg can tell him how to forgive himself.

He walks the shortcut back to the Centre. It’s quiet during the weekday, most people out living their lives at school or work or generally being up to no good elsewhere. He climbs the worn stairs as familiar to him as breathing and heads towards his room two doors down from Louis’. 

Fast footsteps on the stairs make him pause to see who it is. A girl comes around the corner, familiar for the wrong reason.

“Sam,” he says to the girl storming down the hall. He met her on the forest path near her uni. Talked with her for over an hour before leading her dangerously close to Gerards inconspicuous SUV, just close enough for no one to notice the way she kicked and screamed as she was shoved in the back. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.”

The girl doesn’t stop until she’s reached Nick. He’s expecting a slap to the face or punch to the gut, not the knife that pierces through his skin. He can’t breathe.

“You two faced bitch!” Sam yells.

Instinctively Nick pushes at the girl and tries to trip out of reach, but she’s faster and stronger as the pain starts to cripple him every time the burning knife enters his body. The assault ends without him noticing. He’s fallen to the floor, where it’s cold and still and he can’t think through the searing pain. 

There’s a rush of footsteps on the stairs. Louis calls his name. There’s blood all over him. He might be speaking but it doesn’t matter because Nick needs to tell him. He needs to.

“I helped him. The kids. I helped Gerard.”

Nick’s lips are numb and he can’t tell if they’re actually forming the words, he can’t be sure there’s even a voice coming from his throat, but he needs to tell him, so he keeps talking. He talks until his lungs cut out while he tries to say Louis’ name. His hands are so warm on his face.

x

“No, no, Nick! Fuck, Nick come on.”

His body feels electric. Every nerve ending tingles like he’s immersed in arctic water. Nick’s blood burns his skin. It slides under his hands as he taps away on his phone and rambles off the address between gasps of air. Nick’s eyes are closed. Louis’ body keeps convulsing every few seconds. He realizes he’s sobbing when the paramedics arrive and throw a shock blanket at him.

He tries to wipe his face and it comes away pink. Nick’s blood is everywhere. He scrambles away from the crush of people gathering at the spectacle and gets into his jeep to follow the sirens. His fingers catch his eyes curled around the steering wheel. They are covered in blood.

He replays the last thing Nick said while choking on his own blood.

“I deserve it.”

Louis’ fingers tighten.

x

Zayn taps his foot on Harry's doorstep. He’s not a hundred percent sure why he suggested meeting up after Perrie went to the salon with friends, but after a day spent with someone who wasn’t a work colleague Zayn found himself calling Harry. Now he’s here, and the door opens. He checks over his shoulder before ducking in.

“Hey,” he greets and slips off his trainers.

Harry greets him back and they naturally drift into the kitchen. A glass of burgundy is pressed into her hands and they lean against the island counter.

“Did you find the girl?”

Harry’s face darkens in a scowl.

“No. No girl, no Jeff, no Niall.”

Zayn flinches at the name and takes a sip.

“Maybe you have too much going on. Tell Jeff’s friend he’s not here, it’s not your responsibility to track him down. You’re not the police.”

Harry grinds his teeth and Zayn has to bite back a chiding comment about his dentist that he used to tease him with when they were younger.

“Like they’re any better at finding people,” he growls.

It’s maybe unfair, but no less true. Zayn picks at a string on his shirt.

“Have… ” His voice catches and he ducks his head to clear it and try again. “Have you heard anything more about Niall?”

“No.”

They sit in silence. Zayn sips the wine.

“Have you talked to Louis lately?” He asks.

It’s been on his mind since he told Harry the truth. He knows him well enough to know he’ll be angry at Louis too, he’s been wondering if he should have warned Louis about it. He hasn’t spoken to him since the ill-fated coffee with Nick, worried about what the guy would say to Louis about it.

“No.” Harry says sourly, “Louis can fuck off.”

“Harry,” Zayn sighs.

“He’s the reason I’m in this mess! He left Niall alone, he lied to the police, he’s the reason-” Harry cuts himself off and presses a curled fist to his mouth. 

Zayn furrows her brows, because Harry’s making eyes like Zayn’s supposed to know what he means. It’s been too long for that. Zayn can’t read anybody like that anymore. 

“He’s the reason what?”

Harry turns his back and leans over the sink. Zayn watches his back, his mind racing, trying to connect dots he can’t even find.

“Harry,” he demands, unsteady like he’s trying to gain balance on a trip wire. “What the hell are you saying? That Louis is the reason Niall’s gone?”

“No.” Harry’s fists are solid white where they grind against the marble countertop.“Louis is… he’s the reason I’m… I broke up with you.”

The admission knocks Zayn out of his horror and spinning back into confusion. Harry slumps his shoulders. Like peering through murky water Zayn finds the dots. Muddled memories he’s never put together.

Louis answered Harry’s phone when Zayn thought he was out of town, walking into a room and the two of them going silent, finding them passed out on a sofa together in an embrace he’d thought cute at the time. Now he recalls the way they’d sprung apart, like they’d been caught.

“You and… Louis?”

Zayn doesn’t quite know the exact amount of years he spent with Harry, the line between when they were friends and when they started dating always a bit blurred, and they broke up explosively, drawn out into weeks of arguing and name calling that he retrospectively realised was a way for them to still be in each others lives. They haven’t gone a month without talking since they met. Meanwhile Louis had been silent, watching from a distance. Not as distant as he’d thought, obviously.

“We weren’t... “ Harry motions with his hands, facing him but not meeting his eye. “It was only a few times, not that it makes it any better, I’m sorry.”

Seven years ago Zayn would have thrown this in his face. He would have laid into him with everything he had. Now he picks up his wine glass and swallows the rest. He reaches across the table to take the bottle, emptying it into the glass, and his wedding ring catches the overhead light as he pours. It’s been seven years. He has a wife and a mortgage and a car and he’s fine.

It doesn’t matter that his wife is controlling him to death, or that he’s dependent on her to pay the mortgage and the car, and he hasn’t been fully sober since he received a phone call from Jay Deakin.

“Somedays I hate him,” he says into the wine glass.

“Louis?”

Zayn laughs humorlessly.

“Niall.”

The name on his lips is instantly sobering, his tongue suddenly feeling incredibly candour.

“At first I tried to repay the memory of him by taking care of you. Now, I’ve spent the past seven years trying to ignore the way it’s tightening around my neck, like I can hardly breathe. I close my eyes and all I see is him crying on the ground.”

Harry doesn’t say anything. Zayn takes a swig of his wine like it’s water.

He wakes the next morning with a familiar headache in an unfamiliar place. Slowly he slumps into an upright position to find Harry’s sofa beneath him, the man in question passed out in the armchair across the room. With a clumsy hand Zayn pats down his hair and tugs at his clothes the best he can without a mirror, quietly slipping into his trainers and out the door. 

In the car he pulls out the flask stashed under the passenger seat to ease the headache. It takes several minutes of sitting in the driveway before he finally opens his eyes and starts the car.

He unlocks his front door slowly, his shoes already off so he can pad through the halls without a sound. When he finds the bedroom empty he lets out the breath he’s been holding. Perrie must already be at work. He turns into the ensuite, answering the siren song of a hot shower. A groan of relief escapes him as the steaming hot water hits his skin and the heat of it soaks into his muscles.

The shower curtains fly open. He yells in surprise at the sound and presses his back against the freezing tiles. A red faced Perrie stares him down.

“Where the hell were you?”

“At Harry’s.” He says before he can realizes how stupid it is to admit.

Perrie’s face grows a deeper shade.

“You spent the night at your exes house? How stupid do you think I am?”

Water rolls into Zayn’s eyes as she speaks and he squints, the headache that had started to recede in the steam now back full blown. One sip was clearly not enough.

“Can we do this later, please?”

“Why? Haven’t finished washing his cum off yet?” She spits at him and whirls, slamming the door.

The shock of the moment keeps him locked long after she’s gone.

x

When Harry wakes to find the sofa empty he can’t name the feeling.

After the break up with Zayn he violently shifted between quick casual sex and strict denial. Ed was the last person he’d been with, and his reappearance in his life, along with being around Louis and Zayn again, brought a lot of the old confusion back.

After a few glasses of wine and binging on dark chocolate drops he had hidden away in his cupboard, Zayn had blown his mind. They’d sat up for hours, talking about sex and romance and gender and every variable under the sun. Harry didn’t add much to the conversation, Zayn completely came to life and Harry had a hard enough time trying to keep track of everything.

Zayn admitted it was part of a class he’d taken in school and Harry wondered why he was still working as a clinic secretary when he was obviously so impassioned about the medical field he’d studied for years. When the talking and wine had exhausted Zayn into snoring against a throw pillow, Harry lay awake and forced himself to admit things he never wanted to when he was a bullheaded frat boy.

Other than the hangover the sugar and alcohol left him with, he feels something like calm. He hasn’t felt it in a long time.

It doesn’t last. By the time he’s swallowed down a cold breakfast there’s an itch growing. He drops his dishes in the sink and put a name to it. Screw Jeff, he needs to find Niall. As much as he doesn’t want to face it, his best bet is working with Louis to do so. The thought of facing him after looking in the mirror and admitting to himself how shitty of a person he used to be about everything is uncomfortable at best.

The Centre is quiet when he arrives. Unlike the last time he visited the common room is all but deserted. Luckily he recognizes the only face left.

“Camille?”

The girl looks over the pages of her book with a bland look. Her eyes are red rimmed and bruised. There’s a cut on her lip.

“Where’s Louis?”

The girl shrugs.

“Most likely the hospital still. Someone attacked Nick in the hallway.” Suddenly the empty chairs that surround them make sense. Harry is about to leave when Camille says, “Whatever you’re looking for, he’s not interested.”

The comment gives Harry whiplash. There’s a smirk on the kids marked face like she knows she’s hit a bullseye. The cockiness of it grates on Harry’s already jostled nerves, so he pushes back.

“Present from a client?” He growls. Camille's glare turns to ice. With a loud scrape of metal on linoleum Harry sits at the table. “I assume that’s how you knew Ben. You fit the look.”

Camille’s book drops to the table unceremoniously so nothing but the table stands between them. She arches an eyebrow.

“Seems you’re not the only one with anger issues. No wonder Louis liked you, he’s got a penchant for troubled things.”

Harry freezes. It was stupid of him to assume Louis would hold his tongue, when all he’s ever been known to do is talk. He wonders how many people know. How many have looked at Harry and known they had a past. The thought eats at him, just as Camille wanted it to. The girl smirks.

“He didn’t tell me, Harry. He didn’t have to.” It’s a merciful admittance, but no less alarming.

Harry struggles to push past it and keep his voice steady.

“Where did Ben do business?”

Camille tilts back in her chair and Harry waits to be told to fuck off.

“There’s a shitty motel.”

Camille lets her chair drop and leans in, her face clearing of the mask she’d been holding on to. Without it she looks tired.

Harry has Camille type out the address on his phone and pins it on a map. It takes nearly an hour to drive there. On the road he thinks about Camille. The kid’s living one step off the street and Harry wonders how the hell she gets out to the motel on her own.

The app says it would take nearly two hours of biking to get there. Considering what Camille would be doing, Harry can’t see a two hour ride very practical after a night of working. Which means Camille must get in a car. Presumably a stranger's car. And she has to trust them to drive exactly where she says to go. Not turn down the dusty side roads. Not throw her in a ditch on the freezing cold nights, not leave her with eyes vacantly staring at the stars. 

The pebble in Harry’s stomach burns.

Harry slams on his breaks in the parking lot and cranks the emergency break. He tries calling Louis, for whatever the fuck reason, but only receives an automated message that the voice inbox is full so he can’t even leave a message. He stares at the ugly facade of the motel. He can’t say he knows what he’s looking for here.

Maybe it’s stupid. It is stupid. But Niall’s blood was in the same room as a prostitute. It’s not ridiculous to think he might have been in the room at the same time, and he might cross paths with people of the same nature frequently. 

There’s no one thing he’s looking for here, he just needs to find something.

Even with this desire, it shocks him when he comes across it. He’s stomped past every door and peered through the sheer curtains at glimpses of lives very different from his own. Some are vacant. Some are shut up tight. One has something dark staining the curtains. It could be mud, could be wine. Could be blood. The door is unlocked and Harry doesn’t hesitate to push on it, but the sight is enough to stop him from taking a single step forward.

Blood covers every surface. Pools on the rumpled bedspread and splashes on the walls and curtains. A trail leading in and out of the washroom. It ends abruptly in a neat line at Harry’s feet, still wet. From his place in the hall he can’t see a body. Or smell one. He takes out his phone with an uneasy feeling about how he’s going to explain what lead him to finding the room.

There’s nothing to hint Niall’s involved with this, but the way things have been going it feels too big to be a coincidence.

x

Summer markets are a bit kitschy, but you can’t find better lettuce in any grocery store and Maura surprisingly has the day off, so she browses the produce slowly and enjoys the fresh air in the park. Maybe she’ll invite Harry over for dinner tonight, make his favourite taco dish. It’s been awhile since he’s been by.

“Please? Mum, you promised!”

Maura turns at the whining, faded memories making her smile in amusement at the brat tugging on his mother’s hand. She takes her change from the vendor.

“What did I say?”

Maura looks back at the harsh voice. The mother has the poor kids arm twisted in a tight grip and yanks him close.

“No more. What’s the problem with you? Huh?”

The tone isn’t just scolding, it’s scathing. The kid looks close to tears.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” Maura says before she can think it through. The woman spares her a glance but doesn’t release her hold. “He only wanted a chocolate. No need to hurt him.”

“Who the fuck are you to tell me how to parent?” The mother spits while the boy's arm is turning red where her hand is holding him. Maura feels a switch inside her turn on.

“You’re hurting him.” She says matter-of-factly.

The mother scoffs, “He’s fine.”

He’s not fine. He’s a beautiful little boy who should be cherished and spoiled. Maura could do better. She would have done better.

“Ma’am, it’s child abuse.”

The woman steps towards her. Maura hears the slap before she feels it. Slowly she turns her head back to face this crazed bitch. A haze of adrenaline fuels her in a way she hasn’t felt since team sports in school and she headbuttst the other woman. The crowd of people are quick to pull them from each other before another blow can land.

Liam Payne accompanies the responding officer.

“Maura!” He jogs past the ambulance where they’re attending to the other mother to Maura’s side. He looks between the two women, confused.

“I did something stupid,” she sighs.

Inside she knows she would do it again. Even if the lady presses charges. There’s a bruise starting to bloom on the little boy’s arm that makes her wish she could do more.

Liam tells her Jay would have come, but there was a new crime scene and the paperwork was chaining her down. When she asks if it has to do with Niall she’s not sure what she wants the answer to be.

Liam shakes his head.

“Doesn’t look like it. There was a lot going on in that room, but I think it’s an unrelated bust. Drug deal gone wrong or something.”

Disappointment swells. She used to know what happened. His story had a villain, Katheryn Argent, and as horrible as it was, his death brought closure. Now she doesn’t know if there are any answers and every little boy she sees strikes the same thought: She could have done better.

“I want to know why she said it.” She says while wiping the blood from her forehead.

Payne scrunches his face in confusion. “Who, the lady?”

The adrenaline of the recent fight has filled Maura with fire. She’s tired of being the weeping woman, the poor mother.

“No. Katheryn Hudson. I want to know why she lied about killing my boy.”

x

Jay Deakin hates this room, hates it probably as much as anyone else who’s ever been in a prison interrogation room, but Maura was insistent and Jay wasn't about to let her come down here herself. She doesn’t need another murder, her gut is starting to feel soft from the number of recent hotdogs. 

The woman across from her smiles.

“Recent evidence suggests Niall Horan is not deceased. There was no concluding evidence for his death other than your word, which leads me to wonder why you would give a false confession of murder.”

“What an interesting game to play,” Katheryn smiles lazily, her legs as spread as they can get chained to the floor. “Are you really this bored?”

“You didn’t kill him Katheryn.” Jay states loudly, sternly.

Chains and fists slam onto the mettle table as Katheryn hunches over it and leans as close as she can get.

“He cried for his mother the whole time. Begged for his brother. Even asked for you, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

She says th name in the high pitch imitation of a child and the hair on Jay’s arms raises. How could she know if she didn’t do it? That’s what Jay gets caught on. Because Katheryn’s always known the names Niall would say, has pointed his picture out from a selection, knew the exact area he went missing from. Maybe back then she’d looked it up or read it in the papers. To remember them this long?

“There’s another reason we came for a visit,” Payne interjects when Jay fails to keep pushing. Katheryn tilts her head in exaggerated intrigue. “Your father is dead.”

Katheryn laughs unsteady with shifting eyes.

“Nice try, detectives. I don’t know how you thought that would work for you-“

“Katheryn.” Jay cuts her off. She’s so tired of her drabble. “He suffered a heart attack, there was no one else home.”

Katheryn’s smile turns into a snarl. Jay’s seen the log book, knows her father is the only visitor she ever has. Once a year, for twenty years. 

“No!” Her chains rattle when she pushes against them, straining and rebelling. “No!” But this time it sounds more like a whine of a petulant child.

“Why did you lie, Katheryn?”

Her eyes are crazed when they hook into Jay’s.

“Rot in hell, you festering cunt.”

Jay and Payne try for a little longer and receive nothing more than threats and curses until it’s clear she’s lost what little rationality she used to possess. They leave her to the madness.

The rest of the day is a game of cat and mouse, but the cat is twenty years too late to find any trace the mouse might have left. Another team takes over the new scene Harry, of all people, discovered in the motel once it’s clear there’s no connection to their case past the same seedy motel. She and Payne leave late without getting dinner.

Louis is sleeping on the sofa when she gets in. He’s rubbing his eyes and sitting up as Jay unlaces her boots and notices him.

“Mum?”

“Hi darling,” she sets her boots aside.

It’s been a long time since Louis has come back to the house. If she’s honest, Jay would say she selfishly wishes it were more often. The boy hasn’t been calling her like usual, if Jay weren’t so busy she would have paid him a visit sooner. 

She doesn’t ask what’s keeping Louis up. She knows. It’s the same reason there’s three empty tea tins stashed on her kitchen counter. SIn a big show of deflation she slumps into the worn armchair.

She loves her son. She knows her son.

“Louis,” and she doesn’t like that one bit. The tone she defaults to with him. This weary drag curling in her throat like disappointment, but it’s not Louis she’s disappointed in, never has been. “I trust you, so I let things slide. I’m not oblivious.”

Louis doesn’t look at her. They’ve never spoken about it. The anonymous tips her coworkers receive, the information that appears right when they’re about to give up on a case, information that legally couldn’t be proven. She’s allowed herself to live in the grey zone of plausible deniability by never shining a light on it.

“Something’s missing. Has been missing for a long time, I suspect.”

She edges on saying it out loud, but the words don’t fit her mouth. She waits. It becomes clear that Louis isn’t going to say anything. Goddamnit Louis.

“Niall’s file.”

“It’s upstairs,” Louis says to the window.

He clears his throat in a way that tells Jay there’s more. She waits.

“With dad’s.”

Pale moonlight silhouettes her boy alone on a sofa she bought specifically because it would hold three. The harsh light is not kind to the creases under his eyes and the soft impressions already lining his face. He’s old. When did her boy get so old? When did he stop being a boy?

Jay tips her head back to look at the ceiling, past it through Louis’ old bedroom, to the third floor full of dust and bones. She imagines she hears the floorboards creak under the weight of their ghosts.

x

Zayn rolls his neck out, trying to release the ache a poor night's sleep left him while he scrubs at the dishes soaking in the sink.

“You’re being selfish.” His wife says around a mouthful of omelette. “It’s not a complicated situation.”

“We’re friends, Perrie.”

“You have other friends! Ones you don’t have a history of sleeping with.”

He rolls her eyes. A mistake.

“Zayn!” She yells and throws her dishes into the sink so the water slops up and drenches his shirt.

He winces at the noise of something breaking in the water.

“I’m not a joke, I’m your wife. I’ve provided you a house and a car, I supported you through school. It’s only fair you support me back.”

He stays silent, waiting for the sink to drain so he can collect the pieces of the broken dish. 

When she speaks next his voice is low and soft. “I love you. I know you love me, I’m just asking for you to show it.”

She puts a hand on his face, tucks a fallen strand off his forehead, then the moment is over and she grabs her jacket from the back of the chair.

“Stop seeing Styles. I mean it.”

The front door closes behind her and the sound echoes around his beautiful, empty house.

He cleans until there’s no sign that breakfast ever happened and pulls out a new outfit from his closet full of elegant things. They used to be in love. Or something like it, he’s sure. The grandmother that raised him passed shortly after Harry left, and Perrie was right there, warm hugs and soft smiles when offering a place to stay until he sorted things out. He never left.

He calls the clinic where nothing new has come up and tells them his vacation is going well. Yes, Hawaii is beautiful. Yes, the weather has been lovely. No, haven’t been to the volcano yet. Soon.

He gets in the car with no destination and ends up on Harry’s street. He parks a few houses down and walks. The sun is high and warm and glints off of a powerful muscle car gliding by. It’s eye-catching, he watches it’s unbelievable path to Harry’s driveway. A charming red headed man gets out, pushing expensive sunglasses onto his forehead with a glistening watch on his wrist. He walks with a smoothness Zayn has only seen from predator cats on the nature channel.

The door opens. Zayn can’t see Harry from where he’s been struck still on the sidewalk, but the man’s face blooms an impossibly white smile before he steps in and the door closes behind him.

He can’t say why he does it. Maybe it’s jealously flaring up. Maybe it’s simple rabid curiosity. Maybe, and most likely, he’s trying to forget the gross feeling lingering on him ever since Perrie’s touch this morning. He walks along the side of Harry’s house and pulls himself over the fence with a running jump and dexterity he hasn’t used since high school track and field.

His landing is rough and unbalanced but he manages not to make too much noise or fall on his face, so overall it’s a success. Most of the side windows are dark or frosted for privacy, but the back door to the patio has a clear view to the kitchen. Luckily the two men are gathered there, habitually gravitating to food like the prime mammals they are.

It’s hard to tell from behind the neatly pruned shrubs lining the yard, but Harry looks happy. Comfortable, even, with this man. They’re both smiling and, wow, Harry looks down like he might actually be blushing when the guy pats his shoulder. Zayn wouldn’t have understood it before, but now he sees it. The way Harry’s body tilts towards the guy, the way he doesn’t stop looking when they’re talking.

He’s… interested. Sexually. From the way the guy looks at Harry when he bends down at the fridge to grab something, the feeling is mutual. 

He tugs on his sleeves absently as he thinks it over. He should leave. He’s going to leave.

Both men turn their heads so suddenly it makes him stop and keep watching. They’re looking at the front door. Harry’s frowning. Zayn holds his breath when he starts walking down the hall, towards the door, and Zayn’s stomach sinks. Harry barely has his hand on the door handle before it flies open and forces him back to reveal Perrie.

Zayn swears under his breath. Everything is muffled sounds from so far away but Zayn can guess what she’s yelling about. She’s looking around, eyes wild, and he knows it’s in search of himself. His car is only down a block, she probably passed it on her way here. What an idiot Zayn is. What an asshole she is.

Perrie’s charged her way inside, and Zayn prays she’s still there and far enough away from the open front door that she isn’t able to see him mad dash across the yard. He doesn’t look back until he slips into the driver seat and starts the engine. The sidewalk is still clear when he pulls away.

x

It takes longer than he’d like to get Zayn’s psychopath of a wife out of his house. The woman keeps insisting Zayn’s hidden away, and they’re having an affair, and she’s known all along so don’t think you’ve gained anything on me Harry Styles. Ed is the only reason it doesn’t turn into a physical altercation. His voice cuts through Perrie’s heated demand to see the garage.

“Hey shithead, I happen to be quite familiar with the last person fucking around with Harry and I can promise it sure as hell wasn’t your precious husband.”

That breaks things up pretty quickly. Harry’s not exactly happy Ed had to say it like that, but it does the trick of shutting Perrie up. A few nasty words on her way out and she’s gone. Harry apologizes to Ed, both for the intrusion and the lack of Jeff related information he has. He falters on telling him about the reopening of Niall’s case, unsure if it’ll be more distraction than relevant, so he stays quiet about it. He mentions the girl, Kendall, and the colleagues mismatching stories. Ed takes the lack of anything in stride.

“It was a shot in the dark. I had a feeling I’d have to come drag his ass out of whatever hole he’s fallen into. Think I’ll have to start looking at hospitals, lock ups, and long lost relatives now.”

They part amiably with a hug that feels warm and is longer than it might need to be. It’s been a long time since he’s had sex, or even thought about pursuing it. Having James around brought back a lot of memories, and unlike the previous times he thought about it, he didn’t automatically push against them until they were smothered with denial.

After it closes Harry stares at the door. Silence presses on him, makes his fingers twitch, his jaw clench. There’s nothing he can do about Niall’s case, the cops don’t even think the scene in the motel is related despite what Harry’s gut is telling him, and his mum was back to working long nurse shifts. There’s little Harry can do without getting in the way. 

Finding Jeff is something he can actually do, but even there none of it fits. The girl disappearing days after Harry saw her at the Centre, her false records, the guy that attacked him. 

He needs to find that girl. Kendall.

Students are everywhere when he arrives at the school. It must be a break between classes. They mingle in clumps and migrate in herds, making it hard to recognize them as individuals. He catches sight of a familiar frizzy blond. It’s one of the girls he spoke with standing in a cluster of others he could maybe recognize if he tried, but this particular girl looks like Maura in the family photo book he used to flip through as a kid, and it’s easy to pick her out. It takes a moment for a script to come to him, some lines so cliche he’s heard them a thousand times on television and greats the group as a whole.

“Hi, we spoke earlier about one of your professors. Unfortunately I believe his disappearance and Kendalls may be connected. She could be in serious trouble, do you have any information concerning her location?”

The smile he uses is the same one he pulls out when meeting a client for the first time. It doesn’t get them talking.

“Did she mention anything the last time you saw her?” he prompts.

“Kendall was an ice queen extraordinaire. Anything she shared had a price, including conversation.” One of the girls says.

She gathers her bag and walks away, the rest of the pack following, some slower and even with apologetic smiles. Halfway back to his car someone grabs at his arm.

“Hey,” it’s the girl with the frizzy hair. “I think you’re right about Kendall.” Her eyes shift around like she’s looking for someone, never quite making contact with his. “Can you help her?”

“Yes.” He says because it’s the only answer that’s going to work.

The girl twists her backpack straps on her shoulders before she steps into his spqce so they’re almost touching. This time she looks him in the eye.

“I know where she is.”

She takes him to an apartment block that would be improved only by knocking it down and starting over. The smell alone makes Harry’s throat close to ward off gagging. The girl that opens the door is pristine. Her hair spills in soft waves to her waist, she’s wearing jewellery Harry could buy a yacht with and her clothes are cut in the simple exact lines Harry sees in court on well paying clients. Her makeup and the way she moves could be affecting his perception, but put side by side she doesn’t look much older than the frizzy haired girl hugging her. 

I’ve seen her before, he realizes. Without the glam and the silk, in a place that doesn’t look much different than this.

“Kendall.” Her eyes are sharp enough to skin him alive. He straightens his shoulders in an effort to look unaffected. “I’m a friend of Louis. May I come in?”

He should have known Louis would be tangled in this. Where the fuck has he been, anyway?

She doesn’t widen the door like he’d hoped, in fact she leans into it and blocks the way entirely.

“What’s his middle name?”

Her voice is stiff through a clenched jaw. Harry can feel his face press into confusion until he sees the way she’s effectively blocking the other girl from him and he probably couldn’t reach for the door before she slammed it shut if he tried. It’s a system, a smart one.

“William.”

Her eyes widened. “Can you take me to him?”

There’s a waver in her voice giving away what her polished exterior has hidden. There’s tremor to her lips, a wetness in her eyes, a tremble in her hand. She’s terrified.

Kendall tells him to wait in the car while she changes. When she comes out her friend splits off in the direction of the school and Kendall is wearing torn jeans and a t-shirt while her locks are tangled in a messy bun Harry used to favour himself in university. Her face is wiped clean of makeup, skin shiny and red from where she’s rubbed at it.

“Staring is rude.” She buckles into the passenger side.

Harry turns to the road and mentally plans the route he’ll take to the Centre. It’s rough and he’s only thirty percent sure it’s going to get him anywhere near where he wants to be, but he hasn’t exactly made a habit of being in this neighbourhood.

“Do you know where Jeff Azoff is?” He asks two blocks into the drive, he can only hold his tongue for so long.

Kendall sighs, “I told him too much. He’s got such a temper.”

He downshifts roughly for a red light.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, not anymore. He got upset when I told him about having to lay low after Ben… after he died.”

Harry glances at her quickly before he shifts back up on the green.

“Why are you hiding?”

She rolls her eyes. “Jeesus, has Louis told you anything? Ben gave me the Click because he knew Modest Tech would track him down for it. Which they did, obviously. There’s no way to know if Ben told them anything, so I had to cut off with Jeff incase they came after me.” She shakes her head and purses her lips, “Jeff is like a dog that bites and gets offended when you hit back. He was pissed, said he was going to sort it out. Somehow he managed to set up a meeting with a Modest Tech rep at some shitty motel, but he never called after.”

Dread settles into Harry’s limbs and makes his tongue heavy. He clears his throat.

“When was this?”

She looks out the window. “Two days ago.”

Fuck. His fingers curl tightly over the steering wheel until they’re marble white. Motel Blitz, room 708, blood. A shit ton of blood. He remembers trying to describe it over the phone when he’d informed the police. He looks at her profile while she faces the window. She’s so young. He’ll leave breaking the news for Louis, he deals with kids everyday.

The Centre is quiet. Camille’s table is empty so Harry is forced to approach a new face on the sofa. They tell him Louis is probably upstairs in his office. It’s weird, hearing the words office and Louis in the same sentence. It forces Harry to remember that in some aspects, most even, Louis isn’t the kid Harry keeps thinking he is.

There’s no door so he knocks on the trim to get his attention. Louis glances at him over a laptop and the brim of glasses Harry has never seen on him before. He loses his train of thought at the sight of them.

“Hey.”

Harry swallows. “Kendall Jenner is in my car.”

Louis’ eyes go impossibly wide behind the lenses before he springs up and they’re knocked off in his scramble to shove on a jumper. His shoulder shoves Harry out of the doorway. Harry mutters a curse and jogs after the flailing man through the hall and down the stairs.

“Why the fuck would you bring her here? Do you have any idea?”

Harry doesn’t hear the rest when Louis shoves the main entrance double doors open. Harry’s car sits right in front where he parked it. The passenger door hangs wide open, the vehicle empty. Louis pulls at his hair with both hands.

“Fuck! Fucking shite, Harry.” His voice breaks as he yells.

Harry feels numb, his eyes staring hard at the car like it’ll reveal Kendall if he doesn’t look away.

“She wanted to see you.” He feels stupid.

He was in the building for less than five minutes. Louis turns on him with wet eyes and rage, his mouth in a snarl he opens to lash out. A white van slams on the breaks behind him and honks the horn before he can. Harry blinks. Twice. Sitting in the driver's seat is Ben Murs.

“I know where they took her,” the dead man says.

Harry looks at Louis, who is already climbing into the open door of Harry’s car. Harry hurries to shove himself into the driver's seat. The exclaiming logo of Modest Tech stares back at him from the back door of the van like a representation of the thought track in Harry’s mind.

“Only because your car is faster,” Louis mutters as he buckles in.

Harry drives wildly behind the van. It feels good to drive like this, to use the car to its full capabilities in a way he’s never had reason or time to do.

“Jeff Azoff is dead,” he blurts.

“No, he’s not.” Louis counters.

“Louis,” he insists exasperated, “I saw a crime scene. He’s de-“

“You don’t know shite about it Harry. Keep your mouth shut.” The fierceness of the words is grating and Harry stares disbelieving at Louis.

“You think you can tell me what to do? You think-“

He sees the oncoming car with seconds to spare and jerks back into his lane behind the white van, speeding past the horn blaring car that skids behind him. He can feel Louis glaring at him and his jaw ticks. They stay silent for the rest of the tire squealing drive, through the edges of town and into a high end residential area with sprawling mansions and acres between property lines.

The van pulls over on a street smack in the middle of a forested area. There’s nothing but a two lane road and trees any way they look. Louis jumps out of the car before Harry has time to cut the engine or question who they’ve actually been following.

“The back gate is a hundred yards ahead,” Ben says and points in the right direction, tells them what to look for, and spews a string of numbers Louis somehow manages to repeat back to him with confidence. “The moment I enter the front door is your best time to come in the back. Stay out of sight until you see the van drive in. Either she gets to the front and in the van or out the back and to your car.”

He returns to the van and drives off.

“Can you explain to me how I just had a conversation with a dead man?”

Louis is quiet as they march steadily down the road, his eyes downcast and brow furrowed in focus.

“That’s not Ben.” Harry glares at him to explain as Louis waves at his face. “Ben had a mole on his ear, and his face was rounder. It must be a twin.”

Harry stares him down for the ridiculous notion. This is not some spy thriller, plot twist twins do not just show up at random.

“I’m serious.” Louis insists.

Harry humours the thought, but he can’t make any sense of it no matter how he aligns it all; a dead man’s twin, a teenage girl wearing pearls, a missing professor, a room full of blood. And still, somehow, Niall.

“What are we walking into?” Louis doesn’t look at him.Harry shakes his head. “I can’t believe you dragged me into this.”

“I dragged you? Who was the one to bring her out of a perfectly good safe house? Who’s been asking all the questions and sticking their nose into places it shouldn’t be?”

“If it concerns Niall it concerns me.”

“What if it’s Niall holding a gun to Kendall’s head?” There’s a glint in Louis’ eyes. “What if he points the gun at me? At you? Have you thought about that, tough guy?”

“Niall wouldn’t…”

“You don’t know that!” Louis’ voice echoes in the trees and Harry glances nervously around them, pulled back to the reality of their surroundings.

“No,” he says subdued. “I don’t.”

Niall was five when he went missing. They’d been brothers for three years and Harry was there on his first day of kindergarten and the first time he had ice cream. He remembers trying to pretend otherwise, but he always navigated himself to be next to Niall when they crossed the street so the kid would hold his hand with blind trust.

He looks at Louis out of the corner of his eye. The thought of Niall holding a gun to Louis shakes him to his very core. As much as he remembers Niall in nostalgic sepia tones, he remembers Louis in vivid technicolor. The feel of his body pressed against a wall. How he laughs with his eyes squeezed shut and mouth in a wide smile when he means it. Hearing his name whispered like a prayer. Pressed to choose between the two, Harry knows which he’d choose, and that chills him.

The thick imposing gate of the property slides open under Louis’ quick fingers and reveals a stunning house of glass and concrete. Quickly they jog towards one of the corners and lay flat against a cement wall to avoid detection. Louis edges towards the window of what Harry thinks might be the living room.

“Seeing Ben number two won’t be an issue,” Louis mutters. Harry peers around Louis’ shoulder and sees straight through the entire place.

From their corner of an empty living room the front door was a glass panel on the other side of a long hall, and on the other side of the sofa was a decadent kitchen holding three men and Kendall. She stands between them all by the island counter with her head held high in her ratty clothes. The man across from her is easily the owner of the house. A luxurious fine knit sweater and the caramel tone of his skin makes him a model of modern luxury.

“Hey,” Louis elbows him, “it’s that guy. The not-Niall guy.”

Harry looks at the henchmen and recognizes one as the man from the hospital bed, standing with his arms crossed by the stainless steel fridge behind everyone else.

“Mum said he gave them a fake ID and the slip.”

There’s nothing to go on for the third guy because his back is turned to them. His hair is dark brown. Harry stares at the back of his head, waiting for him to shift or cough or do something if only so he can get a glimpse of his face.

“Here we go.”

Louis’ mutter drags Harry’s attention away from the faceless man towards the door where the figure of Ben-number-two is clearly coming up the walkway. There’s a patio set on the concrete slab behind the living room, but the whole wall is nothing but glass.

“Where’s the door?”

Harry searches fervently for anything that looks like break in the glass. Ben-number-two was steps away from the front door, they have seconds. He looks at Louis and sees his fingers tapping quickly on his cuffs.

“There,” and he jumps up, leaving Harry to scramble after him.

Somehow Louis pushes the right spot in the glass wall for it to silently hinge open. They slip in just as Not-Niall opens the front door for Ben-number-two. Fuck. Maybe this is some spy-thriller shit. Louis instantly drops behind the sofa, but Harry hangs back behind the stacked slate chimney and listens.

“Fuck off, Jimmy.”

“Kendall,” a smooth american accent demands. “I’m not asking again.”

Harry peers around the edge of the stone to see the older gentlemen, Jimmy, holding out a hand, the other on his hip. Kendall opens her mouth just as yelling from the front door calls everyone’s attention to the two men wrestling there. 

It happens quickly. Jimmy barely moves his hand and the second for Harry to realize it’s got a gun in it is all it takes before the sound of a shot cracks the air.

“Agh fuck!”

“Olly. So nice of you to join us.”

The twin, Olly, is grasping at his thigh in the front hall. It bleeds sluggishly, must be a lucky miss of anything vital. Another shot cracks the air and Not-Niall drops. When he falls Harry spots the hole piercing his temples.

Louis lets out a yelp. The last of the henchmen, the faceless man, hauls him from his cover behind the sofa and brings him alarmingly close to the maniac with a gun. Every nerve in Harry is electrified, paralyzed with indecision as blood pounds in his veins.

Jimmy tuts. “What’s this?”

The man shoves Louis to his knees with a hand bunched in the neck of his shirt. Jimmy's smile makes the hair on Harry’s neck stand.

“Ah, the thorn in my side. I’ve been wondering who would be stupid enough to pull what’s mine away from me.”

The more he talks the more Harry knows his time to act is slipping away. Olly is still in the doorway, in line with where Harry stands. He’s looking down at his thigh, if Harry can just-

He waves. Like an idiot he’s waving his arm out hoping it’ll reach the bleeding man's peripheral. By some small mercy Olly catches it and meets his eye. There’s a moment where they recognize the situation they’re in, and there’s no way to communicate a plan without drawing attention to it, Olly is too far away to say anything without being overheard and Harry can’t move without being discovered.

“Cops are on their way, and when they arrive you’ll be dead with this gun in your hand. I’ve acted on self defence after you shot my colleague, I’m devastated and shaken. No one will be looking for Miss Kendall here, pity for her.”

Harry bites his tongue hard not to cry out when Olly launches forward. Harry keeps himself hidden while the sounds of a struggle carry on. A shot goes off and hits the ceiling close to where he hides, dry wall dust floating down to his shoulders. There’s no way to tell who’s winning. He hears cursing from two men and things falling and breaking on the floor, the weight of their bodies hitting halls and furniture scraping and skin slapping against the hardwood. Harry chances a look.

Olly’s tackling the henchman on the other side of the room, a clear path of destruction trailing behind them. Jimmy holds the gun pointed at Kendall, and Louis remains on his knees with hands in his hair, but Jimmy has pivoted to watch the struggle with an amused smirk. 

Olly is on the floor, the guy on top of him, but he manages to get the knee of his good leg up and the henchman puts a hand to his crotch in pain. Olly uses his elbows to crawl himself further along the floor and Harry starts to understand, because to keep his eyes on the action Jimmy has to pivot a bit more, putting his back to Harry.

Using the sound of the two men colliding once more for cover, Harry sprints past Louis and into Jimmy, putting an arm around the man’s neck and twisting the hand with the gun upwards so another shot goes into the ceiling. Jimmy tries to flip him but Harry manages to keep his weight down and knock the man off balance, sending them both to the floor, Jimmy's head hitting the coffee table as they go. His effort is feeble when trying to keep Harry off of him and Harry manages to roll the man onto his back and straddle his chest, pinning his arms beneath him.

“Where’s Niall?” Harry yells. “Niall Horan, where is he?”

Jimmy is still blinking blood out of his eyes from the cut on his forehead.

“Who on earth are you?”

“My broth-“

Hot blood sprays his face. Kendall screams. Jimmy goes limp beneath him. Harry lets go of the cashmere sweater stretched between his fists and stands with fire in his eyes.

Olly’s stubborn jaw grinds.

“He killed my twin.”

“My brother is still alive, that man could have been the only person to tell me where he is.” Harry advances on him, Olly struggles to meet his eyes where he’s hunched over still holding his thigh.

“He didn’t know shit.” Louis says from behind him, Kendall hovering close to his side. “He didn’t, Harry. He would have used it against you if he knew.”

Harry wants to argue, his fingernails still biting into his palms with the need to tear flesh. Louis doesn’t back down. He stares Harry in the eye and lifts his chin. Kendall takes Louis’ hand, not quite meeting Harry’s eyes but not ducking down either. Harry hardly cares, his eyes don’t leave Louis as he leads her towards the back door.

“Are you in the system?” Louis asks. He's in control, everyone in the room can feel it.

“No, but it’ll match Ben.” Olly’s voice is muffled because he’s looking down at where his hands are currently cinching a belt around his thigh.

“Cops will be here soon. Tell them they were fighting when you arrived with urgent work news and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were injured and acted on self defence.”

Jimmy's words in Louis’ mouth make Harry’s teeth itch.

Louis leaves out the back door with Kendall, not a glance back at Harry who follows, careful not to step in any blood. They retrace their steps back to Harry’s car. The only words spoken are directions from the backseat where Louis is holding Kendall’s hand. After what’s happened, the blood still crusting on his face and under his nails, the sight of their joint hands shouldn’t bother Harry as much as it does.

He has to pace himself and count to three between every glance he takes at their hands on the leather. She’s too young. Louis’ too gay. Neither are really true, but Harry is grasping.

He parks in an attached garage in the suburbs so far away they’re technically in a different municipality. It’s not uninhabited.

“What the fuck?”

Harry is still in the garage having let Kendall and Louis enter the house first and his gut clenches with a new rush of adrenaline when he hears a man yell from inside. He should have gone first, he’s got broader shoulders, he could have blocked them. Kendall dashes forward, then Louis takes a few more steps in, and Harry sees him. The motherfucker.

Jeff Azoff is wearing sweatpants and a cotton shirt with no shoes, holding a red cheek in front of Kendall. Thank fuck she hit him first.

“You asshole. Not a single word since you left?”

“Kendall, c’mon. You know I couldn’t.”

“Yes, you could.” Kendall talks over him, leaving no room for denial. “Because the last time someone didn’t call me they were dead.” She’s got tears on her face but her voice is furious.

Harry looks away, uncomfortably feeling like a voyeur. He sneaks behind her and follows a hallway, peering into every room he passes until he finds a closed door. The sound of water running blankets any other sound from the room. Harry steps in without knocking.

Steam from the shower wafts around him and half obscures Louis, who has stripped down to his pants. He’s scrubbing his hands in the sink.

“Why is Jeff here?”

“Kendall told me about his radical plan. I got him out of the motel in one piece and took him here.” Harry stairs at the hair dropping on Louis’ forehead in the mirror. “I already had her tucked away, I didn’t want to move her for the reason you obviously discovered yourself.”

“What’s in it for you?” 

The shower running is the only response. Harry steps closer.

“Why risk yourself for these people?”

Louis drops the scrub brush with a clatter. His shoulder blades stand out in relief on his back when he leans against the counter and hangs his head.

“Same reason I run the shelter.” Harry’s shoulders slump in defeat at the small sound of Louis’ voice. “I saw him last.”

“Lou…” Harry steps behind him.

The tense line of Louis’ neck, the tremors of his spine. He looks small and delicate in a way Harry associates with frightened wildlife and children, but never Louis. There are scars Harry has never seen and bruises painting the places hands have been on him. Harry remembers the blood painting the motel room and looks at Louis’ face in the mirror, trying to reconcile what Louis is saying. He made that mess. It’s impossible to picture the boisterous teenage Louis in that room.

Harry has never seen a man die before today, he can still feel tremors of adrenaline and terror that he'll have to sit down and deal with once he's alone, but in the mirror Louis looks calm. Harry is suddenly certain that this is not the first time Louis has been so close to violence and death. That kid Harry used to know is gone, and in his place is a man with cold eyes and hard edges and he wants to know, needs to know, if this Louis will feel the same against him.

Louis’ skin is warm in the steam heated room, yet Harry feels goosebumps roll under his palms as he slides them down Louis’ sides. When Louis doesn’t pull away Harry steps closer, his chest pressed against Louis' back as he lets his hands move without hesitation when they meet his pants and take them down.

“You need to clean up,” he murmurs into Louis' hairline and gently pulls on his hips until he's turned around.

Louis’ eyes flick across him. Harry’s avoided his own image in the mirror, he can still feel the itch of the blood on his skin, and Louis’ eyes linger on his face but they don't meet his eyes.

Louis’ hands pull at his shirt. “You too.”

It's slow and firm, everything they never were when they were young and overeager, panting against each other in fits of fumbling hands. Harry takes his time letting his hands follow the path of the water down Louis’ skin. He tilts his face into the spray as Louis does the same.

They finish against each other, their foreheads pressed into each other, Louis’ mouth so close Harry can hear the small desperate sounds before the water drowns them out. Louis says his name like he’s begging and it sounds like the Louis he used to know. Harry is helpless to do anything but follow with a groan into shoulders broader than they used to be.

Eyes closed, his nose trails the side of Louis' jaw and catches on the light stubble there before he's close enough to kiss, a simple press of lips and no more. When Louis pulls away his hair is slicked back and his eyelashes are spiked with water, his wide eyes more dangerous than the gun he recently faced. Louis steps out of the shower without a word.

Harry is towelling off his hair when Louis slips a folded pile of sweats onto the counter and disappears. Dressing is an awkward affair, he feels off-kilter in his own body. Harry finds the rest of the house’s inhabitants gathered in the living room, wet hair and pink skin on all of them. They’re wearing fresh grey toned cotton. Louis stands with arms crossed in a business stance that screams there’s nothing left of the moment they just shared.

“Kendall is older than you think. I got her a place in the high school because she wanted the experience she didn’t get growing up. She’s an escort, and she became acquainted with Ben when they discovered their shared clientele before he got his job with Modest Tech. When Ben fell into trouble with them he approached Kendall for help. They killed him, but not before he managed to pass the Click to Kendall for safekeeping. When Jeff pulled his brilliant plan,” Jeff makes a derisive noise in the back of his throat, “I got him here, and then you showed up with Kendall. Why, might I add, did you have an escort in your car?”

Harry rolls his eyes.

“I was trying to track this arsehole down for a mutual friend. All I found was Kendall.” He looks at Jeff, “You owe Ed a call.”

“How the fuck do you know Ed?” Jeff asks.

“University.”

He shrugs and tries not to feel guilty under Louis’ stare. His phone vibrates where he’s thrown it on the coffee table and he grabs it like the lifeline it is. It’s his mother. The words on the screen make him want to cry with relief, she’s making tacos. He doesn't want to know what the Click is or why it's important, he doesn't want to trade snide remarks with Jeff Azoff, and he doesn't want to think about the enigma that is Louis Tomlinson.

He wants Casa del Horan tacos and a good night's rest.

x

Jay Deakin takes great pleasure in few things, food, tea, and time with her kid. One of those things periodically forgets how to use a cell phone, and another is too caffeinated to indulge in more than once a day. So when Payne tries to take away what little she has left, damn right she’s defensive.

“I’ve gained fifteen pounds since I was partnered with you.” Payne says over the top of their monitors, like it has anything to do with Jay. That’s on the kid, he should be working out more, really. She’s about to say so when her phone rings. Her personal.

“Maura,” she greats and questions simultaneously around a mouthful.

“Jay, there’s been an incident.” No good news ever came after those words. Jay frowns into her noodle box. “Harry and I heard someone in the house. Harry’s chased after them, who knows what’s going to happen if he manages to catch them.”

Jay takes her feet off of the desk and straightens. She puts the noodle box down and waves Payne closer.

“Alright, I’m going to hand you off to Liam so I can get a hold of Harry and see where he is. Stay on the line for him.”

She hands over the cellphone and quickly digs up Harry Style’s number while Payne reassures Maura, already gathering his jacket. Jay nods as Payne places his own cell on the desk and walks out. Jay uses Payne’s phone to call Harry.

“Styles speaking,” he sounds out of breath.

“Harry, this is Jay Deakin. Your mother called about the home invasion. Have you made contact with the perpetrator?”

“No. I made it halfway through town before he disappeared into a park. Not visibly armed, slim build, black hoodie and jeans. Nothing useful but the backpack.”

“How so?” Jay pauses writing.

“Black too, but it had a smiley face patch on it.”

“Copy. You want a ride, kid?”

There’s a telling silence before Harry agrees, still catching his breath, and rattles off the closest street name. Jay drives him back to the Horan house, she doesn’t need an address for that.

Payne and Maura welcome them in, the latter looking shaken with her hair seeming bigger than usual.

“Did they hurt you?” Jay asks.

“No.” She tries to smile but it’s a grimace torn between grief and anger. Jay looks at Payne for clues but his tight face reveals nothing.

“What did they take?”

“Niall,” Maura manages to grind out, but the word deflates her and Harry steps in to hold her. “They took my Nialler,” Jay hears before she and Harry have a muffled conversation against his damp shirt.

“The photo albums.” Harry translates.

They take statements and do a walk through to make sure it’s all clear. A second floor window has been pried open, but Harry insists Maura will stay with him until they can repair it to lock properly again. Maura doesn’t look too happy about it, but that’s a conversation Jay feels they’ll be having once the door is shut behind her. Jay and Payne leave the house late with little to go on and more questions than answers, which is starting to feel like all they do these days.

Jay finds herself back in his least favourite place in the world. The fluorescents make him squint in annoyance. It works to her advantage. The other occupant of the room isn’t smiling anymore.

“Where’s the body, Katherine.”

She’s not here for games. Payne isn’t here to play good cop. Katheryn remains silent.

The chair beneath Jay grinds against the floor. Her steps are deliberate and steady until she’s rounded the table. Katheryn’s chair squeals when she grabs the back of it and whips her around to face her.

“This feels personal, Deakin,” Katheryn tries to grin but there’s a caution to it, finally she’s listening to the edge in Jay’s voice.

Jay braces herself on the chair and table, has her cornered and chained and when she leans into Katheryn’s face she has nowhere to go.

“Niall Horan. You chopped him up.” Jay slams her hand on the table just to watch her jump. “Where did you put the pieces?”

As soon as an address comes from her lips she’s gone.

Payne keeps looking at her. Jay knows she’s pacing, and she knows she’ll have to talk to the kid so he can stop looking at her out of the corner of his eye like a wild animal, but right now all she can focus on is the torn earth before her.

“When this case is closed I’m going on vacation. Paid to sit on a beach, doesn’t get better. How about you, Kyle?”

Jay listens to distract herself. Idle chit chat is something she’s rather good at, but she doesn’t feel like participating today.

“Gotta introduce my girlfriend to my dad. He keeps asking about her but I know if she meets mine I gotta formally meet her mum, and that woman’s terrifying.”

His talking is periodically interrupted by grunting or sighing as he moves around the bottom of the hole with a brush and a camera. Jay and Payne share a surprised look. Girlfriend. This little bugger that’s been pulling on Payne’s chain has a girl. Jay feels a few chuckles burst past her lips at the sight of Payne’s face. She wonders if the tech even realizes what he’s done to her poor partner. She can see Payne rearranging every moment he’s spent talking with him in the vacant look of horror he has. Jay continues pacing slowly, more of a wander than her previous prowl.

The kid pops his blond head out of the hole and says something unintelligible behind his mask to Payne. Jay can’t decipher it but Payne’s face is not looking good.

“What the hell is he saying?” She stops pacing. Both eyes turn to her with a looks he doesn’t like.

“It’s a girl.”

Jay chokes on her heart in his throat. A little girl. There’s a moment she’s repulsed by her relief. It’s quickly wiped away by the anger that follows. Payne ducks towards the fenceline for a phone call so Jay approaches the kid directly.

“How can you know?” She demands.

“It’s not exact, but the hips, the clothes. Hair doesn’t break down as fast and it looks pretty long.”

Jay shakes her head. Rubs her face with her hands.

“Jay,” The sound of her given name from Payne is surreal, and it warns her that this nightmare is not over. She drops her hands to her hips to prepare for whatever’s next. Payne hesitates and Jay winces at the uncharacteristic caution. “They made an arrest for the Thompson murder.”

Jay’s brow furrows. “That’s our case, who made the-“

Payne says it all in one go like tearing off a bandage. “It’s no longer our case. Louis Tomlinson was arrested for suspected murder.”

Her lungs collapse. Nothing could have prepared her for this. She recalls the tired look on Louis’ face in the moonlight, how distant he’d seemed that night. Bile swells in the back of her throat, ringing starts up in her ears, she crouches down and puts a hand in the dirt to steady herself.

x

The phone picks up on the third ring.

“Styles speaking.”

“Harry.”

He can’t get past that. He doesn’t know how to say the rest.

“Louis,” of course he sounds surprised.

He’s not using his cellphone, he’s lucky the man even answered.

“I need a defence attorney.”

It’s the closest he can come to asking. Because he knows this case might drag him down, and he can’t ask Harry to be dragged with him. Maybe he should have taken the overworked and under-qualified city DA. The silence is long.

“What do they have?”

“Someone claims they saw my car. They’re pressing charges for the murder.”

“Impossible.”

Louis stares at the phone, wondering if maybe Harry is talking to someone else at the same time.

“Harry?”

“I’m not your lawyer, Louis. You were with me all day.”

It takes a moment to click. Harry is offering to be his alibi. If it isn’t iron strong, if he forgot to cover anything, it’s not just Harry’s reputation he ruins. It’s Harry’s life.

“All day?” He asks, because he can’t ask what he really wants to. Are you sure?

“Yes. I had you here, all day.”

Louis presses his forehead against the wall and breathes for the first time since the cruiser took him away from the Centre.

He says, “Okay,” because he can’t say the rest of all that he wants to say.

When he hangs up he lets himself remember the rush, the rev of the vehicle as he ran the body over, his hands bloody on the steering wheel before he wiped away the prints. He doesn’t regret it.

Greg visited Nick in the hospital before he died. He was unconscious the entire time, but Louis wasn’t. Greg told him the whole story, about Nick being a captive all those years and blackmailed into assisting the kidnapping. It may have been true, but he also knew Nick was the only person Camille would talk to for the first year she started visiting the Centre. Louis knew Nick, and he knew the true monster was the one holding the leash.

He’d only meant to look. To stare the man in the eye and see if anything stared back. He hadn’t accounted for the haze of anger that took over him the moment the front door of the hideous mansion opened.

Even if he has to spend the rest of his life surrounded by cement he wouldn’t regret it.

x

Zayn doesn’t know what day it is and he loves it. If he doesn’t know the date, he can’t remember that today was the day he crashed the car, he burned the house down, he left his wife. It wasn’t him that did those things. Perrie took him off the insurance, she changed the locks on the door, she called him a whore and demanded his ring back. 

If he can’t remember the date, he definitely can’t feel how naked the second finger on his left hand feels.

The space is dark and bright and black and colourful, especially when he shakes his head to the music and his hair flips over his eyes. This band is fucking amazing. Or maybe they’re shite. But the bass is heavy and his heart is vibrating with it.

He throws himself at the bar between a crush of people and giggles at the bartender when he takes his order. He’s cute. Or maybe he’s not. But his cheeks are warm and he feels desire for something, why not him?

There’s no line for the washrooms, miraculously. He pisses a waterfall and takes time admiring himself in the mirror. The lighting is perfect for a selfie. Or maybe it’s dim and shadowy. The photo is blurry but he posts it anyway because fuck it, he’s allowed.

He’s stepping back when a guy grabs his arm.

“Honey, you’ve gotta watch your drink.”

Zayn’s scowls. Who is he, his mother? His mother’s dead, he doesn’t need another one. He tries to shrug off but the guy pulls him closer and Zayn stumbles off balance before his hip slams into the counter to steady him.

“Your long island at the bar, I saw a guy put something in it. You’re drugged, hun. Do you have someone you can call?”

The guy has to repeat it before it sets in. Drugged. Zayn splashes cold water on his face. The drink was still over half full when he left for the loo, or maybe it wasn’t, he’s had so many it’s hard to keep track. The guy helps him use his phone because he didn’t dry his hands and it’s hard to read the screen through the drops of water and the alcohol in his head and- fuck, the drugs in her system.

He offers Zayn a cigarette while they sit on the dirty street curb, but his head is spinning so harshly he can’t reach for it. Twenty eight years old, a full adult. He has no house, no wife, nothing but the empty flask in his pocket. 

Several hands, too many hands, help him into a car.

He wakes on a patchwork sofa he doesn’t recognize in a rundown living room even more alien. Someone had the forethought to put a bucket next to the beaten up coffee table.

Louis is standing in the doorway when Zayn manages to lift his head. He’s holding a cup of coffee and a sympathetic smile. It makes him deflate back into the lumpy cushions.

“Perrie left me,” he croaks on a dry throat.

He feels the weight of Louis sitting next to him.

“Oh Z.” The childhood nickname from the grandmother who raised him makes him feel overwhelmingly like a silly little boy who’s made a mess. Louis tucks him under his shoulder where he curls up and pretends the world doesn’t hurt the way it does.

He cries because it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Perrie had the right to be suspicious after the number of times she’s had to pull him out of a bar, barely able to walk and pressed against a warm body. He’s been getting better. Or maybe… maybe he’s told herself he was, but he still ended up puking into a toilet at least once a month. Perrie may have been an arse sometimes, but she wasn’t the only one.

x

“You dug up a body.” Harry states at the edge of the desk.

“Harry.” Mrs. Deakin doesn’t look pleased to see him. Harry frowns when the woman takes off glasses, so slim Harry didn’t even realise she was wearing them.

“Was it his?”

Mrs. Deakin sighs. “No. We followed insight from Katheryn Hudson. It led to the discovery of a prepubescent female.” The conversation falters. Harry imagines strangling Katheryn Hudson for the thousandth time. “Do you remember anything more about the break-in?”

“We were downstairs, in the kitchen. Heard something drop off of the bookshelf, caught them on the stairs, followed them out of the window.”

Harry knows his tone is short, but they went over this when they recorded a statement. There was nothing left to add. Mrs. Deakin fiddles with a pencil in a habitual way Harry recognizes from Louis.

“What fell?”

“A box of letters from Katheryn Hudson. She used to send them to Maura. I don’t know why she keeps them, they’re horrid.”

Mrs. Deakin’s brows raise and Harry guesses his mother never told anyone about them. Harry’s only read half of one before he tore it in half and mum didn’t let him see the others. They were filled with the same sort of dribble that came from Katheryn’s mouth every time he sat with her.

The pencil in Mrs. Deakin’s hand freezes, “How did she post them?”

Harry shrugs. Who the fuck cares about old letters.

“Never thought of it.”

Mrs. Deakin tilts in her chair with a loud creak.

“Why don’t you bring them in.”

It doesn’t take long for some guys on a computer to figure out where they came from. Something about the numbers stamped on the envelope. Mrs. Deakin sighs long, and her partner shakes his head like someone just ran over his dog when they’re able to pinpoint an address.

“What?” Harry snaps, impatient with being on the outside.

“It’s out of our jurisdiction. Getting approval from the other team could take weeks, maybe a month or two if they want to push us around a bit.” Mrs. Deakin rubs her forehead like just the thought of it is exhausting. “I’ll go make the request.”

Harry watches the other detective. He’s looking sideways at the wall, like he’s uncomfortable, and Harry knows he’s holding back.

“Spit it out.”

The Detective Payne’s hands rest habitually on his hips like he’s more used to wearing a belt than the suit he shrugs in.

“There is another way.”

Harry is confused, until he remembers the illegal photographs of a dead man on Louis’ phone. It sounds like a perfect loophole. Then Harry remembers the tiny sound of Louis’ voice when he used his one call on Harry. They managed to slip him out of those cuffs with a hair's breadth of luck and a shit ton of quick thinking.

The mess with Jimmy hasn’t come back to them yet and hopefully never will. The mere thought of Louis being pulled in for something as stupid as interferance after all of that heats the stone is Harry’s gut.

“I won't let him anywhere near this.”

The detective arches a brow. “You really think you can tell Louis Tomlinson what to do?”

Harry grinds his teeth.

x

Louis watches the house the vulgar letters to Maura were mailed from for two hours before a woman leaves. She’s dark haired and menacing as she mounts the shining motorcycle in the drive and rips away. There are no neighbours but the wild animals she resembles. 

The window is easy enough to jam open with damage she won’t see from the inside. His phone buzzes just as he’s leaning on the sil and cracked it open. Harry.

They haven’t talked since the safehouse. Louis presses ‘Ignore’. 

One crisis at a time.

The interior is barren, a minimalist look that leaves him cold at the prospect of living here. It reminds him of the jail cell he spent a mere few hours in and he shivers. There’s nothing. No mail on the counter or laptop left out, nothing on top of the fridge or tucked in a closet or even under the bed. Not even dust. He’ll have to come back and follow her tomorrow.

He walks by the front door when it catches his eye, a small box on the entrance way shelf. It’s polished stone, no bigger than a jewellery box. In a house barren of kickbacks or personality it’s practically glowing with significance. A silver key smaller than a household deadbolt with a little four digit number on it. His heart skips a beat. It could be nothing.

The nearest storage facility is not near. He arrives midday. The drive made him double back towards home to the warehouse district on the edge of town. One by one he passes rows of identical orange garage doors until he finds the matching number to the key. Opening the door is anti-climatic.

It’s boxes. Stacks of them to the ceiling. He reaches for the closest one, brushes off the dust, and peels back the flaps. VHS tapes bundled in three. He catches the labels and wonders why they seem so familiar. Actors of the past? He picks up another bundle and the name is too familiar.

He steps back, heart racing in realisation. The name meticulously blocked out in black sharpie is Niall Horan. The rest belong to case files he’s seen on his mother’s desk and missing children signs he grew up with on telephone posts. His hands are sweating and shaking when he dials the phone, his eyes trying to take in the sheer number of boxes surrounding him.

“Liam,” he says when the phone picks up, and then he stops, for the first time in his life completely at a loss for words.

X

Jay is suffocating in a dark room filled to the brim with stacks of tapes. There are three for each name, labeled neat: Hunt, Pain, Kill. She stares at the black screen for a long time before managing to slide the first heavy tape, Hunt, into the slot of an ancient VHS player.

She’s tumbling, blurry trees, the ground moving below, a quick glimpse of the sky as the camera is turned around. A figure, a hundred and six centimetres tall in a blue jumper walking through the trees. The camera follows, stalking its way from behind trees and bushes until the figure grows on screen, the camera moving closer as it comes around.

She catches glimpses of Niall’s round cheeks, a peek of his bright eyes flashing here and there as he wanders, obviously lost the further he goes. The video cuts abruptly with the camera so close it captures only Niall’s torso.

The tape ejects itself. Jay’s every limb is encased in concrete, she has to crack and snap through it as she moves to exchange the tape, her brow sweating with effort.

The next tape slides in. Pain.

All air freezes in her lungs. A snowstorm on screen. She waits, unblinking, sweat rolling down her skin and glistening in the pale light. Nothing. A pain swells and grows inside her chest until it bursts in an almighty sob, oxygen tearing through her lungs. Tears seep into the wrinkled creases of her worn face squeezing around her hands as they hold her eyes. 

She falls apart to the sound of static on an unrecorded tape.

The door opens long after her episode has passed, she’s sitting in the dark in front of a blank screen. She’s dimly aware it’s not a good look for his psych eval.

“She admitted to not killing him.”

“How did you know?” Payne asks from the doorway, Jay can see his reflection on the black screen.

“There’s only one tape recorded for Niall.”

“She said something else,” Jay straightens from the thousand stone slump keeping her in the chair and turns to face the man properly. “She said she was interrupted because his father arrived.”

Jay’s eyelid twitches.

“Bobby Horan appeared before her while also being on a plane headed for Amsterdam?” She asks skeptically.

Payne shrugs. “It’s what she said.”

She’s been lying to them this whole time, pulling on their chains to amuse herself. This lie doesn’t make sense. It gives her nothing to hold over their heads. It doesn’t feel like a lie, but it’s not the truth.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Maura,” Jay has the phone already pressed to her ear. It rings once before connecting.

Payne takes over tape duty so when Maura arrives within the hour with Harry in tow Jay has had time to rinse her face in cold water and eat one of the healthy nut bars Louis keeps stuffing into her desk every time he visits. Jay motions for Maura to come with her and shakes her head at Harry when he tries to follow.

Harry looks like he might fight it, but he reigns it in when he catches sight of Jay’s stern face and stays by the desk. Jay takes Maura into the hall near the washrooms. She’s sick of interrogation rooms.

“Bobby Horan was several thousand miles away and a few in the air when Niall disappeared, so I need to know if someone else is Niall’s father.”

Maura looks stricken by the accusation, but her hesitation tells Jay all she needs to know.

“Maura,” she sighs, the tension in her shoulders keeping her voice tight.

The woman is reluctant to admit it, her mouth twisting.

“I never told either of them. I thought Bobby and I were going to divorce soon, what did a little affair matter?” She squeezes her eyes tight and pinches her face together. She continues in quick words, “Then I was pregnant and suddenly he loved me again, thought the world was growing in my stomach. It didn’t last long, obviously. But it doesn’t make sense, he’s-”

“Who was it Maura?”

She hesitates, leans in close and lowers her voice so Jay barely catches the name. “Simon Cowell.”

Jay’s eyes instantly look over her shoulder to Harry standing with his arms crossed at the desk. 

“Jesus Christ.”

Maura purses her lips and shakes her head, probably knowing exactly what Jay’s doing. Cowell had been Harry’s uncle from his father’s side.

“No one knows. You’re not to tell him, you hear? Any ways, it couldn’t have been Simon. He died in the fire three years before.”

“Okay.” Jay grimaces at the loss of another lead. She knows she’s going to have to dig up the file from the fire regardless, just to check. Hopefully this one is where it’s supposed to be. “C’mon, I gotta keep working and you’ve spent enough time in this bloody building.”

They start towards her desk only to see it’s empty. Harry’s standing over one of the techs across the isle and staring at the screen with grim determination.

“What is it?” Jay calls as she corrects her path. No one answers as she walks up and finds the screen split into four with security videos playing in each square. “Donor footage?”

Harry points to the square showing a lineup outside the facility, a bright smiley face patch easily standing out on a black bag.

“This is the backpack I followed out of mum’s window.”

Jay squints at the grainy square. The person wearing the backpack is faced the other way, but there’s something familiar about the back of his head. Before she can place it the person turns to look behind them, their pixelated face still recognizable through the grain.

“The kid?” She all but yells, a tidal wave set off in her mind.

“Who is he?” Harry demands and everyone is looking from the screen to Jay, but she’s miles away weaving red strings through the years and cases.

Distantly she’s aware of her body stumbling backwards, “Ken, Kyle, Klaus. Payne knows, I gotta…” Her feet trip into walking, then jogging.

x

Kyle Selley never arrived for work. No one can pinpoint the last time they saw him. It should be ironic, but it’s not. Louis’ mum is pulling her hair out and Liam is trying to keep order so they don’t get fired for harassment or aggravated assault. Louis spends half an hour sitting in his car parked outside of the precinct working it all out using his cell phone, the back of a crumpled receipt, and a pen he jacked from the front desk.

By some coincidence, Kendall is the link in. She knows a girl with an older brother, and he’s friends with the girl dating Kyle. And of course, said girlfriend was recently introduced to the family and knows where Kyle’s father lives.

Sherman Selley, formerly Simon Cowell, resides two towns over in a mid sized home in the suburbs. He answers the door in a lavender button down and an amused smile.

“Another of Kyle’s scorned lovers realize he has a girlfriend?”

Louis punches him so hard they’re both left crouching in pain, Simon his face and Louis his hand. Louis is lucky his anger is stronger than the pain.

“You are the most worthless piece of crap I’ve ever witnessed in human form.” He grits out.

Simon still manages to sound smug through the bleeding nose he’s holding. “Why so?”

“You abandoned your nephew and you kidnapped his brother, for starters.”

Simon holds up a finger. “Technically, he’s his cousin.”

Louis tries to punch him again, but Simon sees it coming and takes a hold of his forearm, pressing it against his chest and using it to shove Louis into the wall. Louis instinctively struggles out of the hold, but lets himself be pushed back face first into the wall.

He’s worked hard to earn the strength to fight back against men like this, he knows he can do it, but he makes the decision to let himself be subdued by the hand on the back of his head and the weight crushing down on him. He wants to know what Simon will say.

“You have no idea what it was like. You think I abandoned him? Everyone left me to die.” Simon’s spitting blood as he yells, his voice so loud and so close that Louis’ ears ring. “I crawled out of the fire on my own four limbs. When I recovered I was certified deceased and she had them both.” Simon’s snarls.

Slowly he leans back far enough so Louis can see his face out of the corner of his eye, but the grip remains solidly holding him in place.

“I found my boy in Katheryn’s hands. If I didn’t step in he would be dead, I promise you that. I saved him.”

Louis doesn’t have a response. A part of him, dark and buried deep, can sympathize. Louis would never admit it, so he stays quiet while he works on a rebuttal.

“Maura had her chance. Niall was mine, he belonged with me, they both did! But I left Harry for her, didn’t I? I’m not a monster.” Simon pushes until he’s right against Louis, his whole body bracketing him while he says the last word with a sneer.

Louis wants to tell him about the pain he’s caused, about the lives he’s ruined, but he has a feeling it wouldn’t phase the man, so he asks the most important thing.

“Where is he?”

“I built a good life for us here. He likes his new name, he likes his new friends. He’s happy.” Louis grunts when the man shoves him harder against the wall. “I made him happy.”

“Where is Niall?” Louis demands, done with this monologuing bullshit and shoves off of the wall so he can face Simon.

Simon chuckles, his hands releasing their hold easily.

“Damned if I know. Kyle though, he moved back into town, closer to work. Ain’t that the thing? You spend all of those years nurturing and loving, and just like everyone else, they leave you.”

Louis shoves past the man. He remembers the years Maura spent looking wildly around every time some kid called for their mother. He remembers the way Harry used to cry every night through high school. 

He storms out of the door and yells over his shoulder, “You deserve to be left!”

He doesn’t waste anymore time looking at the man when he climbs into his car and for the first time wishes he owned a car with an engine more like the pristine luxury horsepower of Harry’s. His foot touches the floor the whole drive back to town. His fingers tap on the steering wheel.

Where would Niall Horan go?

X

They can’t locate him. Harry feels like every second ticking by is an inch of skin peeling from his bones. Detective Payne is talking to one of the girls the kid, Kyle / Niall, works with. She looks subdued in her office chair as she babbles on about Kyle knowing, he found out as soon as he realized the bandage at the scene was his. Harry grinds his teeth so hard his jaw aches.

Detective Payne kneels in front of her, frowning. “Where would Kyle go, Julia?”

The girl shakes her head and Harry’s fingernails pierce his palms with the strength it takes not to grab her by the shoulders and shake, demanding and threatening. He turns back to the back corner desk he stands over, a small plaque reading Selley, Kyle’ on the side and there’s nothing to show personality other than a general untidiness. Harry looks out at the bullpen before him, Mrs. Deakin and her partners desks in clear view at the centre, the entrance not too far away. How many times did Harry walk by?

He has to go. Being this close and sitting still is impossible. He wipes the pinpricks of blood on his jeans and turns to leave when something catches his eye. Tucked into the corner of the cork board by Kyle’s desk is a barcode tag. Harry peers at the fine print along the bottom.

BLUE / SZ M / CLSC ZIP

Someone calls his name as he shoves through the door, but he’s in his car and peeling out before anyone catches up to him.

x

It starts with Detective Deakin leaning against the window. The woman is usually in good spirits, a generally well respected figurehead for the department, but with her sallow face pressed on the glass she looks like she has the flu. Kyle kicks his bag under the desk and rolls his chair over to his desk neighbour, Julia.

“What’s up with her?” He jerks his head at the detective.

Julia peers around before she whispers, “They reopened the Horan case.”

“What case?”

Julia’s eyes widen like he’s asked something unfathomable. This happens a lot. Kyle has lived in town for barely a couple of years and it seems everyone who grew up here has their own secret language he only sometimes pretends to understand.

“A little boy went missing while the detective was watching him, like, an eon ago. They ruled it as a Hudson case,” this name Kyle does know, the infamous Child Hunter, “but they just found his blood in a hotel room.”

“Billy Martin’s hotel room?” His brows crease. He remembers photographing that room. There wasn’t much blood, or rather, any questionable blood. The splatter from the guy's fatal bullet wound was to be expected.

“Yeah, on a plaster.”

And this. This is the moment Kyle’s hair starts to rise without him knowing why. He watches silently as Julia clicks through her tabs and opens a closeup of a circular bandage the size of his thumb nail.

“This plaster?” He asks. He has to ask.

“That’s the one. Guy’s been missing twenty years, I wonder what happened to him. How the heck did he end up there?”

Kyle feels sweaty, and cold, and he’s shaking a bit like he’s going to-

“Bad lunch,” he mumbles and dashes to the washroom just in time to heave up the perfectly good sushi roll from the place two doors down.

He shoves a trembling hand through his damp hair to push it out of his face and leans against the wall, the floor cold and solid beneath him. Feebly he lets gravity do the work of pulling his hand down against the lever to flush the mess. He works on steadying his breath, his pulse slowly coming back to normal. Twenty years.

“Niall,” he tests the name on his gritty tongue and it echoes around the empty stall.

He heaves again.

How do you go about asking the only father you remember having if he kidnapped you? You don’t.

He stays well away from Sherman, feigning being too busy with work, which is half true. Every second he waits for someone to grab him from behind and expose him, the small needle mark on his arm feeling like a brand under his clothing. Gemma tells him the detectives stopped by her house, and when he pushes she says they questioned her mother, not her. She doesn’t understand why he’s so strung out about it. He doesn’t know what to tell her, so he stops answering her calls.

Julia notices.

“Are you sure you’re well enough? We can send someone else with them.”

“I volunteered. I’m going.”

He throws the camera bag strap over his head and meets the two detectives at the dig sight for what could be his own body, and a desperate part of him ignores reason and in a twisted way hopes to find Niall Horan in that hole. As soon as his eyes land on the bones he knows it’s a little girl, but he has both detectives here desperate to find something. He jokes with Payne as normally as he can through his paper mask and the steady rush of anxiety streaming through his veins.

He keeps Detective Deakin in his peripheral. The woman stalks like a caged animal. He remembers Julia’s words and wonders what he was doing with the Detective when he disappeared. Through stolen glances Kyle tries to see the woman as anything other than Detective Deakin. He’s crouched over the bones, brush in hand and camera around his neck when he remembers. Not something from his childhood, but last week. Detective Deakin’s son came by.

Louis. The name feels familiar, but he’s never actually met the Detective’s son. Kyle peeks at the stressed woman wearing a dirt path into the dead grass.

“I’m right here! I’m fine! Nothing happened!” Kyle desperately wants to yell. He swallows it down and keeps talking with Payne until he can’t take being in his own grave any longer and hands it back to the little girl beneath him.

He sees him. Harry Styles. The brother he doesn’t remember having. He’s in the bullpen sometimes, glaring like he’s being paid to do so. Sometimes he’s with the woman, Maura. His mother. Kyle almost breaks the first time he sees her. Sherman told him his mother died in a car crash. Seeing her is like looking in a mirror, they have the same eyes, the same chin, he bets he gets his smile from her too, but he doesn’t get the chance to see it.

How do you tell a stranger she’s the mother you remember nothing about? You don’t.

After she leaves he hides in the old filing room in the basement until the damp air has turned his fingers numb and he can see his breath. Julia accosts him when he returns to his desk shivering.

“Did you break up with Gemma?”

“Nnn...“ he winces as her eyebrows go up. “We’re taking _a_ break?”

He and Gemma have been on edge for awhile, something they thought meeting the parents might help, like if they took big steps then it meant they must be serious, right? But it turns out faking it until you make it doesn’t work so well with relationships.

“Is that why you’ve been hiding in storage?”

“I have not… “

She stares at him blankly. How is she so good at that? 

He deflates in his chair and rubs his nose in thought. The truth itches on his tongue, constricting his throat until he can’t take it. He looks at Julia, they’ve been friends since they met in training years ago, her laughter is bubbly and eyes kind and even now, as she calls him out for lying, her aura is gentle. He can’t keep lying. He swallows the nerves fluttering in his stomach, a deep contrast to the dread weighing the rest of him down.

“Not here.” He says, the words making him realize he’s actually going to do it, he’s going to tell her.

And he does. He tells her all of it. She’s comforting and kind and it’s great, but he knows no matter the empathy she holds she’ll never really get it, and she may not say it, but he knows she’s not sure about keeping the secret.

Breaking into the house wasn't something he thought long on before doing. Shite could literally not get crazier at this point, and working in foresnsics meant he knew exactly what _not_ to do to avoid getting caught. He almost buggered it up anyway, and damn Harry Styles and his long limbs for making him run so bloody far before he could duck into a proper hiding spot. Between piles of black rubbish bags in a back alley he searched for answers.

He knew on the very fist page. Whatever denial he'd still had was impossible to cling to when his own fucking face stared back at him from the pages. Birthdays, bike rides, Harry's adoption date, them with two other little boys creating mayhem with toothy smiles. His family. His friends. His life. He falls apart there, unsure of every moment he's lived and crying for the life of someone he never got to be. 

He calls in sick the next day. How can he go to work when he doesn’t even know who he is? He doesn’t.

One of his earliest memories is having a blue jumper his dad tried to take away, so Kyle decided the best course of action was to never take it off in retaliation. At some point he spilled something on it and it forcefully went into the wash. Kyle never saw it again. He buys one exactly like it. The new fleece is soft against his skin, the sleeves a little too long on purpose so he can curl his hands in the extra length, something he thinks he did as a kid. He goes for a walk.

Every step takes him closer to the place he was last seen as Niall Horan. It’s okay, he tells the nerves in his stomach.

He wants to be found.

x

The luxury vehicle pulls into the parking lot as Louis slams his creaky door.

“What happened to your face?”

Louis shrugs without looking at Harry. “It met a wall.”

He didn’t look at it, but he can still feel the puffiness of a blooming bruise on his cheek and Simon’s nose did bleed a lot, it’s possible that’s in his hair. He tries to walk by, but Harry’s hand grabs him right where an old cut is healing from the unfortunate motel knife fight he never wants to think about for the rest of his life and he flinches away, out of reach.

“What the hell is up with you, Louis?”

Black laughter escapes his lips when he twirls around. “You used to have a brother, remember him?”

It’s perhaps a bit cruel, and he regrets it when he sees the flash of pain on Harry's face. Then comes anger.

“No. You’re different, and I think you’ve been different for awhile. What happened? Why are you so…” he doesn’t finish, doesn’t have to.

Louis knows, he has a mirror too, thank you very much. And here’s Harry looking at him like the asshole isn’t the exact reason Louis isn’t the naive little kid he was when Harry left. Harry’s spark of anger ignites his own.

“I had to stay!” He yells. “I had to live in the same fucking town and remember all of it. The playground where Niall and I met, the bench my father sat on, the bed you used to sleep in.”

He uses his hands to point out the exact direction of all the places he can navigate to with his eyes closed, because this town is written in his skin. His chest is heaving with years of pressure.

“I was drowning in the past, and I couldn’t run away like you and Zayn.” He accuses, and holy crap he’s shaking with it, the old feelings of betrayal and hurt reappearing like he didn’t spend every waking moment trying to forget Harry’s name.

A piece of him, the same something dark and bitter he felt less than an hour ago, taunts him with how similar his words sound to Simon’s.

Harry looks rightly subdued, his weight shifted backwards on retreat and his hands in his pockets.

“I shouldn’t have left like that.”

“You fucking got that right.” Louis says, seven years of anger heating his voice. “You have no idea what you meant to me.”

“I didn’t know how to be around you!”

Louis will give it to him, Harry looks like being honest for the first time is painful for him, but it’s too late for Louis to feel any remorse for the bastard. If Harry’s upset, he fucking earned it.

The park is silent around them with their only spectators being the birds flying overhead and the silent evergreens. The place suddenly feels too big and not big enough for the both of them. It’s overcast, the sky a blank page above them. There’s too many things to say, and he doesn’t want to say any of them because nothing’s going to change and right now is really not the fucking time.

“Why bring this up now? Shite, Harry.”

Louis shakes his head and swallows down the bitterness as he storms towards the tree line.

“Louis,” Harry says.

“Louis?” Someone else calls.

Louis’ head whips around and there’s Zayn, squinting at him from the looping path that circles the park.

“Zayn, what are you doing here?” He hasn’t seen him since they shared breakfast on the sofa.

“I’m on a walk?”

Louis told him he was welcome to stay at the Centre as long as he needed after the mess of a divorce, but he hadn’t really thought about what Zayn would do to fill his time. He can't even recall if Zayn has a job. The way the day was going, Louis guesses it’s only par for the course things keep popping up in unexpected places. He can still feel Harry behind him and somewhere, somewhere in this fucking forbidden forest is Niall Horan. 

He does not have fucking time for this.

“Whatever,” he rolls his shoulders out and keeps his head down, continuing to the place he can’t remember being in but knows from years spent staring at photos in a case file.

Time stretches until every step he takes feels too slow, his limbs moving through molasses no matter how much he urges them to keep going. A pain in his chest, his lungs swelling with oxygen it releases too quickly to enjoy. The uneven ground beneath his feet catches the tips of his toes on rampant roots and threatens his ankles with painful angles and still, he can't find it in himself to focus on the ground in front of him long enough to be useful.

Above are stark branches contorting themselves against an overcast sky so bright he's squinting. Autopilot takes him left, then right, around the bend near the bench his mother sat on, almost…

The world disappears and leaves only the large oak, the one Harry tried to climb as a stupid kid. It stops Louis in his tracks. He squints harder to see it, but it's looming shadow is too far away at the end of the trail.

His hands are trembling at his sides like he's doing something frightening, but he's not. He wipes the sweaty palms on his jeans and swallows thickly. He's not. Step by step, breath by wheezing breath, the tree comes into focus until he's rounding its trunk. A flash of blue on a low branch and Louis' feet fumble over themselves.

A hooded figure sits on the lowest branch, their back turned and slouched in a juvenile bend. Beat up sneakers idly skimming the forest floor like he's been here waiting the whole time. 

Waiting for Louis to take him home.

“Niall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp. here it is. not my finest moment. After doing this I can see it fit the Sterek pairing a bit better, but honestly I'm not too bothered. It is what it is. I spent maybe two hours on it while procrastinating on my BLFF wip yikes haha! I gotta finish that soon and start my two OHFF fics.... aaaaaaah


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